In A Man of His Village Florentino Cruz leaves his village for the first time in 1986, at the age of fifteen. 1986 was early in the ongoing wave of Mixtec migration. By now the uprooting has reached diaspora proportions, so that today the biggest concentration of Mixtecs outside of Oaxaca is in California's San Joaquin Valley. Most Californians have never heard of the Mixtec Indians.
The Spanish called the province La Mixteca, the Aztec called it Mixtecapan, ‘Place of the Clouds,’ or Mixtlan (mixtli, ‘cloudy’; tlan). The Mixtec refer to themselves today* as nyuu sabi, ‘people of the rain.’ Sabi is the god of rain.
The Mixtec was one of the great Mesoamerican civilizations (800-1500 AD), renowned for their historiography, their goldwork, their stonework, and their polychrome pottery. Today the Mixtecos live primarily in the Mexican states of Oaxaca, Guerrero and Puebla. Estimates of their numbers range from 500,000 to 750,000.
Mixtecs in California number 100,000, making them the largest Indian group in California.
Mixtecs make up more than 10% of California's agricultural work force; well over half of these farm workers are undocumented immigrants.
20% of Mixtecs are fluent in Spanish, far fewer speak English, and most don't have more than the equivalent of a primary school education.
Californian agriculture is a $28 billion/year industry. California supplies half of the nation's fruits and vegetables.
From 1984-2004, U.S. farm receipts from fruit and vegetable sales doubled. From 1989 to 1998, U.S. farm worker wages declined from $6.89 to $6.18/hour. In Mexico a farm worker earns $5 or $6 a day.
The U.S. median annual income for a farm worker is $7,500.
There are 11 - 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States. They make up 5% of the U.S. work force.
Illegal immigrants send home to Mexico $20 billion/year.
Since Operation Gatekeeper was promulgated in 1994, more than 3,000 people have died trying to cross into the U.S. at its southern border.
*Robert Ravicz and A. Kimball Romney, “The Mixtec,” in Handbook of Middle American Indians, Vol. 7, 1967, pp. 367-399
These statistics are current in 2007. Since then many of the statistics are in flux because of tightened border restrictions and decreased U.S. hiring in agriculture and construction.
