Miguel A.

UGALDE
Migrant Indigenous Guatemalan Women
as Agents of Social Change
A Methodological Essay on Social Remittances
L’autonomie du migrant met en évidence son rôle majeur dans le fonctionnement migratoire,
avec sa capacité d’initiative, ses ressources culturelles,
sa capacité à déployer une stratégie de déplacement.
Jean-Marie Carrière1

Introduction

The following essay needs a brief historical and contemporary overview of the
role of international migration and remittances and their social, economic and cultural
effects on the relatively large and highly poor Mayan-speaking indigenous population of
Guatemala.
For at least three reasons, the Guatemalan case is of particular relevance.
First, because of the fact that Guatemala, despite being one of the largest
economies in Central America and being considered a “middle income country” (with a
per capita GDP of US $2, 500 in 2007), has one of the highest income poverty rates (51
percent of the national population) and lowest human development indices (especially
in terms of education and health indicators) in Latin America2.
Second, according to the last national census of 2002, over 41 percent of
Guatemala’s population of 11.2 million people speak one of 23 indigenous languages
and comprise over 76 percent of the country’s rural poor population. Of the indigenous
languages spoken in Guatemala, 21 are Mayan Indian languages and two are smaller
indigenous languages called Xinca (related to the Nahuatl language) and Garifuna (an
Afro-Caribbean indigenous language).
The third and most important reason, given the theme of this essay, is that the
past three and half decades have seen three major international migration movements
of Guatemalans.

1
« Note de lecture », Ceras - revue Projet n°311, Juillet 2009. URL: http://www.ceras-rojet.com/index.php?id=3862.
2
Miguel von Hoegen and Danilo Palma, Los Pobres Explican la Pobreza (Universidad Rafael Landivar, Instituto de
Investigaciones Economicas y Sociales, 1999); Oscar Augusto Lopez Rivera, Guatemala: Intimidades de la Pobreza
(Universidad Rafael Landivar, Instituto de Investigaciones Economicas y Sociales, 1999); and, Virgilio Alvarez
Aragon (editor), El Rostro Indigena de la Pobreza (FLACSO, SEDE Academica, Guatemala, 2003).

5
 In the 1980’s, more than 120,000 Guatemalans were fleeing as refugees to
México and the United States, after the army was conducting systematic massacres
especially among many indigenous areas of the North Western Highlands3.
In the mid 1990’s, following the signature of Peace Accords, many thousands of
Guatemalans returned to their homeland to resettle and reconstruct their villages, their
agricultural fields and their homes.
In the late 1990’s, following the drastic fall of the coffee prices, a new migration
started towards the United States, in the search for work. According to recent statistics,
there are currently an estimated 1.5 million Guatemalan migrants in the United States,
of whom 60 percent are estimated to be “undocumented workers.”

Annual remittances from these Guatemalan migrants are estimated to have

increased from US $600 million in 2001, to US $1.6 billion in 2002, to US $2.1 billion
in 2003, and to an estimated US $4.2 billion in the year 2008. Most of these
immigrants who transfer remittances to their families in Guatemala are located in
various cities and rural communities throughout the United States, particularly in the
states of New York, California, Texas, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Illinois, North
Carolina and Arizona.
Ethnicity and Migration.
Although many of the recent international reports on immigration and remittances
tend to present data by countries rather than disaggregate such country data by ethnicity,
recent data from Guatemala does indicate that many Mayan-speaking families and

3
See Ricardo Falla, SJ Masacres en la Selva, USAC, 1994.

6
communities, especially in the Western Highlands region of the country, are benefiting
from remittance transfers from Mayan-speaking immigrants in the United States. A
study conducted in 2004 by the Guatemala Office of the International Organization of
Migration (IOM), for example, found that there were 139,702 Mayan-speaking
immigrants in the United States who sent remittances to the members of their families
in Guatemala. The same study found that the number of Mayan-speakers who received
such remittances was 665, 564 persons; the latter of whom represented approximately
15 percent of the Mayan-speaking population of Guatemala as identified in the national
census of 2002. Those numbers have increased geometrically by 2008, as the migrants
from Huehuetenango, Quetzaltenango, Quiché and San Marcos, provinces with a vast
majority of indigenous population account for more than 40% of all migrants from
Guatemala4.

Indigenous Population % Poverty incidence %

Discovering Transnational Families.

The original purpose of our research was to assess the impact of migration in
Guatemalan families in the rural areas. Very soon we discovered that the family was not
just living in Guatemala receiving remittances and waiting for the husband or son to
return. They were actual transnational families with many members living across
worlds. Many of the woman followed their husbands or fiancés and many more traveled
also by themselves or with friends and relatives.
Discovering Human Development.

4
Office of the International Organization of Migration (IOM), 2008, Encuesta sobre Remesas y Medio
Ambiente, Cuadernos de Trabajo sobre Migracion, 26.

7
The second stage of our research had to focus on Migration’s impact on development.
We soon realized that trying to draw economic development out of the financial
remittances that the migrant poor in the north are sending to alleviate the poverty of
their peoples in the south would like trying to penetrate a labyrinth with no real exit at
sight. Our Institute’s adopted concept of development, on the other hand, was drawn
from Amartya Sen’s writings, especially from Development as Freedom.5 Accordingly,
development is not consisting of having more or buying more, but of being more, that is
to say, the human capital (as the World Bank calls it) that is fed from education or
learning, from health and sanitary practices, from civic and social participation, from
the equity (especially gender equity) and solidarity that gives political leverage to
organizations and the capacity to produce goods and services on a sustainable way.

Discovering Social Remittances.

This dialectical process of adjusting the conceptual framework to the research findings
and designing new methodology to grasp and analyze the relevant data took us to look
for definitions of the social remittances, to draft an operational definition and design the
tools to detect, measure en analyze the impact of migration in the migrant themselves
and the influence on their environment.

5
Sen, Amartya, Development as Freedom.

8
Social Remittances: empowering women migrants
Conceptualizing social remittances

This essay, which applies an analytical system of social remittances, was not done in a
vacuum. The term and the efforts at systematization have been practiced for decades by
Peggy Levitt, Glick Schiller, Nyberg Sørensen and various others who deserve to be
quoted in a brief summary.

For some time, the theoretical debate about migration has widened and differentiated
the term of remittances6 to include not only monetary remittances, but also to make
useful the definitions of international and intra-national remittances. Individual and
collective remittances suggest a greater separation of the forms of remittances that are
related to mediating institutions in the transference and the use of these funds.

As these financial remittances have already been elsewhere widely studied, in this
document we will focus on another type of remittances that are particularly
transcendental for countries. These are social remittances that, according to Levitt and
Sørensen (2004), deserve attention because they play a role that permits the
strengthening of transnational families and communities. In other words, social
remittances contribute to the formation of transnational collectivity and have the
potential to generate social change in immigrants’ communities of origin. Other authors,
such as Castles (2007), mention that social remittances are a phenomenon that has the
potential to contribute to community Development.
Social remittances were originally defined as “the ideas, practices, social capital, and
identity that migrants send to their communities of origin” (Levitt 2007: 73). However,
throughout the years the concept has evolved to include other characteristics that
contribute to the understanding of the concept and its importance.
According to Levitt, social remittances permeate the daily lives of those who remained
in the communities of origin, change the ways in which remitters act, and call into
question ideas about gender roles, both positive and negative. Similarly, the role of the
state has been called into question.

6
Sorensen, N.N., DIIS, The Development Dimension of Migrant Remittances. Paper contributed to the
International Forum on remittances.IDB, Washington, June 28, 2005

9
Likewise, religious, social, and political groups to which migrants belong have begun to
operate beyond borders. Social remittances are transferred by migrants of both genders,
and according to Sørensen (2005: 5), they are exchanged (35) through letters and other
forms of communication such as the telephone, fax, Internet, and video, among others.
With the purpose of contrasting Levitt’s proposal, the typology of remittances put forth
by Durand of the University of Guadalajara establishes that remittances can be
classified as basic, complementary, and additional. Basic remittances include aspects of
salaries, investments, and capital: that is to say, monetary remittances. Complementary
remittances cover social, in-kind, and systems of practice remittances. Additional
remittances are constituted through notions of prestige, parties, celebration, and
technological abilities as part of human capital.
In spite of his innovative contributions, the typology that Durand describes in his study
is limited in its understanding of all that social remittances can cover due to an
orientation towards economic development. One type of remittances considered by the
author that has not been taken into account by other authors are the “squandered
remittances,” which include robberies, losses, and extortions suffered by migrants.
These, too, would have an impact on the community of origin when migrants relate
these experiences to their families.
This conceptual framework is deepened by the definitions of Levitt and Sørensen
(2004: 5) because they have spelled out the aspects in which social remittances can
impact the communities of origin. These include family relations, gender roles, and
class and racial identities. This then has a substantial impact on the political, economic,
and religious participation of the family members who remain in the communities of
origin.
Levitt’s definition of social remittances (36) indicate that what is transmitted—that is,
the content of social remittances--include normative structures, systems of practice, and
social capital.
Normative structures.
Normative structures are comprised of ideas, beliefs, and values. They include norms of
relationships and social behavior, notions of family responsibility, standards of behavior
in relation to age and gender, principles of urbanity, community participation, and
aspirations for social change. Likewise, normative structures include expectations about
the organizational role as demonstrated through the example of the church, state, and

10
legal functionaries. Norms about the role of the church, judiciary, and politics are
interchanged.
Examples about normative structures can be observed in migrants during their tenure in
destination countries, which offer both positive and negative experiences, and during
which time migrants can adapt to the host country’s ideas, beliefs, and values.
Notions of identity can also change the social status of a migrant, which is often
transmitted to family members in communities of origin. An example includes notions
about gender roles for female migrants.7
Levitt’s normative structures can be made concrete through criteria surrounding the
development of certain projects, ideas about migration, its risks, costs, and the
possibility of migrating as family members have previously done. Perceptions about
economic, health, educational, and employment benefits must also be taken into
account. Similar ideas about ways of learning, certain forms of knowledge, aspirations
for the future of one’s family, and both positive and negative perceptions about
practices and attitudes learned by migrants in the United States must also be considered.
The above listed examples are elements that migrants transfer to their communities of
origin.
Systems of Practice.
Systems of practice are understood as the order of actions necessary to realize the goal
of resolving a certain problem. According to Levitt, these are related to the actions
formed by normative structures. For individuals, systems of practices include household
labor, religious practices, and behaviors surrounding political participation and
citizenship.
At an organizational level, these systems include ways of obtaining group membership,
strategies of socialization, methods of leadership, and intra-organizational contact. To
present the concept in a more concrete form, the author mentioned the example of
Dominican immigrants in Boston, where they lived largely private lives amongst their
communities of origin. Upon returning to the Dominican Republic, homes that had
previously had “open doors” became ones with taller walls, seeking the privacy that
they had become accustomed to during their tenure as migrants in Boston. This

7
Ricardo Falla (2008), in his book about Youth and International Migration Returnees describes several examples
in which the identity is enriched with new behaviors in the destination country as well as the normative structures
from the communities of origin.

11
typology is also observed in the changes of political participation; for example, ideas
about how to better promote one candidate over another, and with which resources.
Levitt’s systems of practice can be understood as the demands of migrants sending
remittances about how to develop certain community projects and how to best invest the
monetary remittances sent to the community. The forms and frequency of remittances
sent to the family, the level of linkages that exists, and the changes in relation to gender,
age, and family structures generally must be taken into account. It also refers to the
changes that families enjoy in regard to their access to health, education, and
community-wide benefit programs. There is also a shift in the knowledge and abilities
acquired after the migration of a family member to a foreign country. Likewise, systems
of practice reveal shifts in the ways that communities choose to celebrate, dress, and in
their musical preferences. Changes in political, citizen, and community participation are
made concrete, particularly surrounding themes of interest to migrants and their
families, and in regard to notions of access and the demand for justice and rights that
were acquired abroad.
Social Capital. Social capital is defined as the expectations for collective action that
affect economic and non-economic aspects as well as the behavior that members bring
to a group in order to achieve a certain goal (Portes and Landolt 1996 in Levitt 1999:
935). Reciprocity in transactions, bonds of solidarity, and confidence are sources of
social capital through which individual behavior is “trapped” so that a predictable form
of expectations can be converted into resources. It addresses a concept that alludes to
the capacity of people to work in groups and cooperate in order to determine common
goals based on the group’s shared norms and values. The norms and values on which
social capital is based are socially transmitted.
Some authors, such as Pierre Bourdieu and Alejandro Portes, contribute a critical vision
to the understanding of social capital in addition to the significant number of definitions
that already exist about the concept. Portes suggests that, as with the concept of
transnationalism, the idea of social capital has been applied to various and distinct
contexts. In this way, the diversity of the applications of the term’s use have contributed
to contradictory interpretations and to the loss of the heuristic value of the term.
In no way do we wish to resolve here the debate about this term, nor do we even desire
to enter into this debate. The purpose of bringing it up is simply to offer an
interpretation of that which Peggy Levitt has contributed and to include it as an element
of social remittances. Social capital is concentrated around the links of solidarity that

12
migrants receive from their families, friends, and other community members who have
already arrived to the foreign country before their departure. These may include money,
ideas, support for employment in the U.S., and things that migrants need in order to
make concrete the goal of migration. The act of sending financial remittances to one’s
family reflects the solidarity to determine community and family projects. Likewise,
migrants offer support for accidents and health issues in general, as with the inversion
of basic education and for the access to higher education. This also includes notions of
solidarity that are expressed by families about their migrant family member who
experienced particular events on the migratory journey and in the place where he or she
lives and works. In general, all aspects of solidarity and support that are observed
between migrants, their families, and their communities are values shared with other
migrants.
Levitt advances the usefulness of the concept of social remittances based on the more
than ten years of experience she has devoted to studies of migration. Her analysis of
“transference mechanisms” is particularly useful in order to prove the existence of
social remittances. The mechanisms have defined forms of transmission, and their
sources of origin and destination are clearly identified.
Both migrants and non-migrants can clearly respond to the question of how they learned
a certain idea or practice, and how they decided to incorporate it into their daily lives.
The residents of a community can specify when and why their ideas changed with
respect to a particular topic, and when they began to act differently in the face of a
particular dilemma. As an example, Levitt mentions people in a community who do not
personally know anyone in the U.S., but who are able to communicate with someone
within familial and community-wide social networks who then “refer” the migrant to an
acquaintance of theirs (Levitt 1999: 437). The constant features of time and the
frequency of communication between migrants and their families characterize
transmission mechanisms.
In sum, the flows of social remittances are not ones that emerge from nowhere.
They have an origin--the “remitter”--and they possess a destination--the “remittee.”
They have a defined purpose, which includes the inversion of economic remittances in
certain areas, women’s participation, the organization of groups, the idea of building
house and with what materials, among other examples.
Levitt also analyzes some determinants of the effectiveness of the impact of social
remittances: from those that can be neatly classified and “packed” to the values that are

13
more difficult to transmit without a negotiation and adaptation on the part of the
community of origin. The efficiency of the systems of communication also determines
the strength of the transition, as does the messenger. The level of acceptance of
remittances will have a greater possibility of impact depending on the person who sends
it. It also matters who receives the remittance: their gender, class, and position within
the family and community.
Other determinants include the differences between environments, including factors
such as climate, geography, demographics, politics, and culture. The transference of
remittances between countries with relatively similar conditions will have a less
significant impact than the transference of remittances between countries that have
markedly different conditions. Moreover, social remittances will have a greater impact
if they accompany another type of remittances, such as financial ones.
The relation of “culture” with social remittances is a multivalent one in Levitt’s
publications, precisely because of the various definitions of culture that she analyzes.
“Social remittances do not arise out of the blue. They are part and parcel of an ongoing
process of cultural diffusion.”8
Nevertheless, she maintains that there are differences between social remittances and
the transmission of culture because culture is disseminated through global flows, over
which time and frequency have little control because of their wide, immeasurable
nature, as reflected by the following sentences:
“Social remittances are an under-utilized development resource that has the potential to
be purposefully harnessed to improve socioeconomic outcomes in both sending and
receiving countries…”
Culture is an under-explored, under-utilized development asset … The more culture is
harnessed to build strong, viable communities that know what they want and how to
achieve it, the more such groups will be able to protect their interests and make claims
vis a vis the policymakers, development professionals, and state officials.”
Finally, Levitt prefers to adopt a definitively indirect position--but one that is no less
valuable or rich--about what culture is NOT9. When culture is freed from the isolated
and static, the result creates mixed and hybrid times and spaces.

8
Social Remittances – Culture as a Development tool.
9
“My intention is not to resolve these debates. But I will say what culture is not”; Culture, Migration
and Development: Rethinking the Connections.

14
“Nor can culture be separated from structure”; rather, it is a product and process with
multiple audiences and technologies. “A third way to think about culture is as a
régime of norms, power and status”…”transnational acts like sending remittances, are
embedded in cultural regime.” It also frees the concept from the culture that contained
it... “Through the selective nature of cultural appropriation: When people move between
several cultural contexts, they pick and choose what they will adapt, preserve and make
into new combinations.”
New phrases, such as: “Cultural diffusion is key in transmitting and maintaining the
collective experiences, values, and memories underlying transnational identities” once
again establish a great similarity with social remittances.
The dialectic between culture and social remittances is addressed by Juan Flores in his
article “The Diaspora Strikes Back: Reflections on Cultural Remittances”10:
“The idea of social remittances needs to be supplemented and sharpened by what I
would term “cultural remittances.” In most social science accounts of more-than-
economic return flows, as exemplified by the work of Peggy Levitt and others, culture
is reduced to behavior, and thus not examined in relation to the national ideologies and
cultures of either “host” or “sending” countries.”
A more elaborate description of the concept has been undertaken by P. Levitt, and other
definitions and contributions to the concept of social remittances have not been as
enriching as hers. She constructs the concept with a group of interrelated authors: N.N.
Sorensen, Luis Guarnizo, Glick Schiller, Alejandro Portes, and Katherine Andrade
Eeckoff.
Other authors11, such as Stephen Castles, simply quote Levitt’s definition without
further elaboration. The same thing occurs in Shah Mahmoud Hanifi’s book Material
and Social Remittances to Afghanistan. Another very interesting book called Social
Remittances of the African Diasporas in Europe continually cites Levitt’s definition,
and contributes relatively little to the overall concept of social remittances:
“The interviewees explained that there are different kinds of social capital (i.e.
knowledge, experience and expertise) that the African individuals in the diaspora have
acquired that are badly needed in many countries in Africa.”

10
NACLA Report on the Americas, Vol 39, no 3, November /December 2005
11
McKenzie, David and Saisin Marcin J., “Migration, Remittances, Poverty and Human Capital:
Conceptual and Empirical Challenges” WPS4272 World Bank Policy Research Working Paper, July 2007

15
Without even mentioning the term of social remittances, other authors realize that other
transfers exist beyond financial remittances. However, they tend to measure them in the
country of origin and with a definition of poverty that is limited to a measurement of
deposits and consumption, or with a vague acceptance of the existence of “human
development”:
“Migrants can transfer knowledge about better technologies leading to more income and
less poverty and bring more awareness of health/education issues leading to better
human development outcomes.”

16
VARIABLES AND INDICATORS
Operational definition.
After this diversity of views and concepts of social remittances, there was a need to
formulate an operational definition that would permit the creation of a methodology to
detect the social remittances among the migrants, to establish variables to be studied
and indicators that would reveal some sort of ‘measurement’ of the intensity of social
remittances and their transmission to the families of the migrants.
The solution for this systematization was to link the social remittances to the “dynamic
human process” of knowing, deciding, acting, and relating to one another socially that
has been studied in depth by the Canadian philosopher/scientist Bernard Lonergan, in
his master piece Insight: A Study of Human Understanding.12
This would be consistent with the descriptive definition of “ideas, behaviors,
identities… beliefs, values, systems of practice…”. Those ideas were not pre-conceived
ideas that the migrant had before departure: they are the product of the migrants’
experience in the transnational, social space. They are called ‘insights’ and they result
from the inquisitive human drive to know, to explain, to interpret experiences.
Lonergan’s next step is the self-affirmation of the knower when he/she verifies that the
idea or insight is consistent with reality. This is a bit of new proud identity that the
migrant will transform into actions, behaviours, attitudes, ethical values interacting with
fellow migrants, with authorities, with bosses, with new environments, systems,
regulations.
Accordingly, the pyramidal construction of social remittances could be depicted in the
following elements of the dynamic human process:

12
Lonergan, Bernhard, Insight, A Study of Human Understanding, Longmans, London, 1992

17
 Habits,
.
Systems

Attitudes,
skills

Deciding actions
Values, Conscience

Judgements, affirmations,
verification, knowledge

Insights, understanding, ideas

grasping relationships
hipothesis
Sensorial Experience: feeling, watching,
listening, perceiving, suffering, enjoying

Having identified the human activities and processes through which the acquisition and
growth of social remittances occur, one is able to relate them to different social or
human areas of interest, such as gender equity, civic participation, use of technology,
cultural inter-action, critical or analytical capacity of the migrants.

Variables and Indicators

As an example, below we have listed the variables and indicators that we assume to
contribute to the development and well-being of Guatemalan migrants working in the
United States and their families back home. They include gender equity, better
education and critical consciousness, civic responsibility, demand for human rights, and
preservation of culture.

18
Variables and Indicators for women leaders.
Our action oriented research has confirmed that female migration transforms the
positions and the status of both men and women in the private and the public
realms. In consequence we have adapted the methodology for the assessment or social
remittances to analyze female migrants’ changing statuses and activities, the
redefinition of norms and the absorption of new cultural and civic patterns that are
connected to the migratory process, the changing nature and intensity of social ties

19
within the family and community, the multiplicity of roles and identities that are
produced by mobility as well as its different impacts on gender relations.
Accordingly, we have selected the following five variables or aspects of the women
processes, roles, functions, skills and challenges:

Self Affirmation. This is the basis that permits the migrant woman to leap into a realm
of changes in environment, in cultural and civic patterns of behavior with control of her
enriching personality through trial and error experiences, insights and success in
achieving her goals. This includes self affirmation as a woman with equal rights and
opportunities as men, as well as controller of her survival strategies and her own
independent decisions. This is quite an achievement for indigenous, rural women that
have, in their own villages very small room for independent decision making on
economic matters, in modification of the living conditions, (including their own dress)
and sets the foundations for becoming agents of social change.

Leadership. This variable is also a condition for social change and, while we assessed
many different facets, qualities and forms of leadership, for the purpose of our graphic
analysis, there are two outstanding features: a) the capacity to see ahead of the others on
the development of events and alternatives of future action or challenges; and b) a type
of participatory, democratic leading style that permits the motivation and the
advancement of others towards social mobility.

Conflict Management. The ability to recognize possible or imminent conflict from

persons and forces resisting change becomes almost a second nature, with skills for
early detection, capacity to identify the interests in conflict, the prevention of
personalizing their involvement and the maintenance of higher principles of gender
equity in their struggle for healthy changes in their societies.

Negotiating Skills. Different from conflict identification and analysis is the actual
shrewdness and serenity to conduct conflict negotiations that affect due respect for
women rights, women identities, women cultural expansion beyond the patriarchal
customs.

20
Resolutions and redefinitions. The final and most difficult achievement is the
dialectical leap, beyond the thesis and antithesis, to reach a higher level synthesis that
would be acceptable to the parties in conflict and that would mean the embracement of
new concepts, new definitions of gender power relations. This phase implies an
evolution of social life that start with the agreement of leaders but that has to be
explained and understood by the women and by the society at large.
Indicators
For each variable, we have selected indicators that can be measured in its intensity by
all the methodological means of the social sciences, the psychological, pedagogical and
epistemological tools that can assess the functioning of the dynamic human process of
experience, insights, judgments, values that inspire decisions, identities, attitudes,
beliefs, behaviours, social practices, bonds of solidarity, gender relations, etc. The
quantitative scale has been from 1 to 3, in which 1 is the lowest presence of intensity,
the lowest number of events concerning an attitude or behavior, the scantest knowledge
acquired the least depth in analysis, while 3 is the maximum.

21
Variables and Indicators that reflect the capacity of Women as Agents of Social Change

Varia-
ble
No. INDICATORS

Self-Afirmation
1 Survival Strategies

2 Gender differenciation analysis

3 Decisión making Independence

Leadership

4 Foresightfullness

5 Participatory democracy
Conflict Management

6 Early detection

7 Analysis of interests in conflict

8 Preventing conflict of interest

9 Gender equity principle

10 Listening capacity
Negotiation

11 Win-win pursuit

12 Give in of parties involved

13 Bargaining capacity

14 Respect for Cultural values

15 Respect for Human rights

Resolution

16 Value of peace and harmony

17 Prevalence of common good

22
Capacity Assessment of 5 Different Women Leaders.
For the analysis of the capacity of 5 cases of women as agents of social change we have
used a large data base of transcribed interviews and conversations, publications, photos
and videos accumulated for the past 4 years. Practically, for each of the 17 indicators
there is at least one anecdote that describes the experience or reaction of the women in a
specific situation of her life as migrant, as refugee, as a mother, as worker, as traveler,
as returnee to her family and village life.
Since it is impossible, in the length allowed to this essay, to explain and justify each
indicator, we hope that the graphical exposure would be at the same time an analysis
and a synthesis of the five assets or capacities that each women is perceived to have to
deal with conflicts, negotiations, redefinitions and resolutions.
The five selected cases
The five women are totally diverse from each other, they all are strong and special cases
on their own, for their experience, for the course of events they follow in their life and
our purpose in the selection is to test the methodology for a possibility of generating
conclusions and recommendations valid for women in general.
The first woman is a house wife that decides on her own to migrate to the USA where
her husband is working, in order to earn extra money to pay a family debt.
The second one has been an activist all her life with a strong leftist ideology who
migrates to the jungle escaping from the army, becomes a refugee in México during the
civil war and returns to the community with her organization to continue the struggle to
defend women’s rights and indigenous peoples demands.
The third one had a baby in the USA, was victim of an anti-migrants raid while working
at a meat packing industry, she was subjected to a home arrest and deported to her rural
village in Guatemala, while her husband stayed working in the US.
The fourth young woman was born in México while her parents were in exile and has
used her Mexican nationality papers to help other migrants to travel through México
and cross the borders to the USA, where part of her family is.
The fifth woman was also in exile when she was young and while her husband has been
working in the USA for many years, she has learned to make independent and
enterprising decision becoming rather productive farmer than re-productive care giver to
her 5 children.

23
1. Woman Returnee

Self
Affirmation
Leader-
Ship
Conflict
Management
Negotiation

Resolution
This woman is a housewife, mother of three children, belonging to the Quiché ethnic group that has dared, after long reflection, to travel to the
USA in search of work and income to help her entire family to overcome a huge debt and to
improve their living conditions. The building of her social remittances during the migration
includes a clear awareness of having human rights even if she has no legal immigration papers, as
well as lot of attitudes and behaviors regarding learning to work and being hired by her capacities
not for sexual favors. She acquired a lot of independence in decision making vis a vis her husband
and her socio-cultural environment, undertaking tasks, risks and responsibilities that were common
mostly for men. She even managed to earn more than her migrant husband. The projected changes
for the future are oriented through the education and orientation of her daughters to obtain better
education than her. Her identity as woman was strengthened with equal gender relations with her husband, the church leaders and the agricultural
workers that she hires upon her return. She is capable of denouncing crimes and getting justice to be done. She increases her socio political
participation and her critical consciousness about the causes and costs of migration gives her ideological leadership in her village.
Identity Negotiation Denouncing

25
 2. Woman in Resistence

Self
Affirmation
Leader-
Ship
Conflict
Management
Negotiation

Resolution

26
This woman started her migration in the times of the civil war, but instead of fleeing as refugee in the neighboring Mexican State of Chiapas, she,
her husband and child joined the movement of Peoples in Resistance, hiding from the army
but without active participation in the guerilla warfare. Eventually splitting from her
husband she crossed to México where she founded, from the exile, an indigenous women’s
organization MAMAKIN that has been the avant-garde in combining the struggle for the
indigenous peoples’ rights with the strive for equity for women. Back in Guatemala, she
continued with the activities of survival and her organization in an atmosphere of afterwar
sentiments. She became such a threat that one day the headquarters of Mamakin raided and

burned down. She resents that her husband “stole” her only son and that he has not allowed her any contact with him. Her
organization resurrected from the ashes and has spread to different parts of the country. She keeps organizing women’s
mobilization activities, she has finished building her house where she lives with her daughter and she lives of the
production of authentic woven materials for indigenous and outsiders.

27
 3. Deported Woman

Self
Affirmation
Leader-
Ship
Conflict
Management
Negotiation

Resolution

28
This woman followed her husband to the USA and got work thanks to a large network of Villagers that had been migrating and settling in a very
small village of Iowa State, Postville, where an orthodox Jewish company had their kosher meat
packing industry. The owners were complacent to hire undocumented workers because of the low
wages and their professional dedication to work. She conceived and gave birth to a baby girl and she
was allowed some maternity leave. One day, the immigration authorities made a raid into the factory
with high caliber weapons and a big support from police, army as if they were combating terrorists.
496 workers were caught, the majority Guatemalans from the same village. Rosana was humiliated

to
produce breast milk in order to prove that she had a baby at home. She was detained at house arrest
with an electronic device tied to her feet. At a trial she was forced to incriminate herself on charges
of identity theft in order to be able to return home. Her husband was not caught. At home she has been leading the formation of a community
organization to denounce the criminalization of migrating labourers, to claim the rights of her baby as a US citizen and to explore alternatives for
income generating activities.

29
 4. Woman involved in smuggling

Self
Affirmation
Leader-
Ship
Conflict
Management
Negotiation

Resolution

30
The fourth woman is not married and she has shown a strong independence, self determination since her young years while still in exile in
México during the civil war years. She has prioritized education so much that in order to pay for it she started get
money from helping prospective Guatemalan migrants through México. Later on, with more experience traveling
with her father and brothers all the way to California, she has managed to help other migrants also through the US
border, through the dessert and to their destination city. While her father and brothers were abroad and her mother
was sick, she managed to look over the store, the construction of the house and warehouse and the agricultural
family work. Now that the father is back, she has proven to be really a transnational person, she is currently working
in Cancun, but with frequent return trips to her village in Guatemala. With serenity, she has been dealing with
difficult problems, with the imprisonment of her older brother, his deportation and his addiction problems. She is
hardworking, honest, truthful and shrewd in negotiations, but she does not care for ideological, patriotic or political
positions. Her ethnic cultural background and Popti language is close to vanished, not due directly to the recent
migration activities but rather due to the life the whole family had to have as refugees living in México, where she
was born.

31
 5. Enterprising Woman
Self
Affirmation
Leader-
Ship
Conflict
Management
Negotiation

Resolution

32
This fifth woman had migrated, when she was young, into exile with her family, and migrated back into Guatemala, at the time the Peace
Accords were signed. After that, it was her husband who has been as a migrant for many years in Florida with increasing financial growth. The
long absence of the husband, the large number of children and tasks about the home
and the social pressure from the community that consider these women as ‘white
widows’ has worked in Eulalia a strength to build up practical problem solving skills
and an identity of independence, self determination and managerial decision making
abilities. Even with very frequent phone contacts with the husband she has learned
to take, on her own, advantage of opportunities and necessary investments to protect
the family’s patrimony. She decided to start her own chicken farm and this has led
to several side lines of business, like vaccines and medicines for veterinarian use,
like feed for chickens and pigs, building facilities to expand the farm and the stables.
These activities were directed also to redesign her kitchen and stove to get rid of the
smoke around the house with a chimney (even if she still uses firewood as energy
for cooking) in blatant contrast with her father-in-law’s house. Similar changes with
the bathroom facilities are highly unusual for an indigenous rural home managed by
a woman who has never been a migrant to the US. All these modernizations have
never damaged the full respect for the essence of the Mayan culture world vision, but they challenge the traditional views that link the culture to
traditional unhealthy practices for hygiene, cleanliness, privacy, efficiency and comfort.

33
Conclusions

Several conclusions are derived from the application of the social remittances
methodology to selected women that are involved heavily in migration and that have
had an evolution in their identity, self affirmation, leadership and that have had to sort
out conflicts, to manage negotiations and to invent re-definitions in gender relations in
order to reach resolutions in their families, their societies and their partners.

1. It seems that migration is an effective factor contributing to a self affirmation of

the women as equal in gender with men and with stronger power relations to
deal with the actors in their transnational social space: family, extended family,
peers and co-migrants, authorities and society in general. This is true among the
survivors not necessarily in the case of women who break down or who did not
make it in their migration efforts. Our design registered as a first indicator the
dominion of the survival strategies in the path towards self-affirmation.

2. Leadership, on the other hand has been ascertained, to be a distinctive quality of

male migrant returnees, especially the ones that have been long time abroad (8
years) and the ones that come with plans, projects and tools to build a future in
Guatemala. From our limited study of female returnees, we can assume that
women also become leaders with the added social remittance or social capital of
influencing a change in the patriarchal societies.

3. The perception of Conflict and the overriding principle of gender equity is

present in all the women that we analyzed, even though, the conflict
management skills start to differ from one another.

4. Negotiating in the middle of conflict is totally different from different women,

due to the intensive weight of ideological preconceptions or the interference of
emotions that are not easily controlled or harnessed towards the need to give in
or to give up some gained terrain. There is a feeling of betrayal of principles (the
gender equity principle) when the negotiation requires to accept changes in
forms, manners, representations, priorities that favor an already male dominated
environment.

5. Similarly, the redefinitions of roles, power relations and expectations depend

very much upon a conception of culture (as static or dynamic), the value of
peace and harmony versus an aggressive relation that may contribute to diminish
the gender disparity and the basic differences in the conception of ‘feminism’,
equal rights and obligations, ‘affirmative action’, etc.
Recommendations
The best recommendations for public policies and programs to enforce women’s
rights have been enshrined in the International Convention for the Protection for
Migrant Workers and their Families, drafted since 1990 and approved and ratified by
more than 44 countries (especially countries of origin for migrants).
The basic problem of Guatemalan indigenous migrant women is the
accumulation of 6 pervasive discriminatory practices: for being a woman, being poor,
from rural areas, from indigenous ethnic groups, for being a migrant and being un-
documented.
On this limited essay, we can just join the proposal to use gender as a leverage to
combat all the other forms of discrimination13:
The creation of effective policy alternatives demands the full inclusion of gender
perspectives and women in all decision-making processes and requires an understanding
of how gender relates to race, class, ethnicity, sexual orientation, culture and legal
status.
The roadmap is to develop an understanding of the ways in which gender affects
the exercise of power and the conduct of public policy internationally.
There is a need to build international linkages among women in local leadership
that enhance their effectiveness, expand their global consciousness and develop
coordinated strategies for action; to promote visibility of women and feminist
perspectives in public deliberation and policy- making globally; and to increase
participation of women in local, national and international governing bodies and
processes.
The activities involved are based on seeing women's leadership and
transformative visions as crucial in every policy area from democratization and human
rights, to global security and economic restructuring. Further, such global issues are
interconnected and have both local and international dimensions.

13
Migrant Women’s Human Rights in G-7 Countries – Produced by Family Violence Prevention Fund, and
Center For Women's Global Leadership, Edited by Mallika Dutt, Leni Marin and Helen Zia, 1997

35
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