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Nahua women in Alto Balsas, Mexico: Administering and Generating Remittances for Human Development

Martha García, El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, Tijuana
Germán A. Zárate-Hoyos, State University of New York at Cortland

Introduction

The past decade has brought increasing interest in international migration from academics, NGOs, business and multilateral organizations. The widespread implementation of neo-liberal programs continues to be hand in hand with reportedly higher income inequality and economies that are only beginning to go back to pre-1980’s growth rates. The absence of realistic alternatives coupled with unrealized expectations of the benefits of globalization continue to drive millions of people across the world in search of better opportunities and the chance to increase their well-being. Until recently, discussions surrounding trade flows, international finance and technology transfer have paid relatively little attention to the economic impact of migration. However, this is changing rapidly as international organizations, national governments, universities, foundations, and perhaps most importantly, financial institutions, are “discovering” a basic fact of migration: as migrants move in one direction, remittances flow in the other. This relationship has existed since antiquity, but with advances in money transmission, communications, transportation, regulations, and migrants’ networks, remittances now present a great potential for the economic and social development of migrant home countries.

The Migration Policy institute reports that half of the estimated 150 million annual international migrants are females1. The male absence has lead to new roles for females as they do work previously done by males in addition to the traditional household chores. Gender, then, is a key factor in the likelihood of remittances being sent and received back home. It is the role of females in the administration and generation of remittance flows that guides this paper. We want to examine this role within the context of indigenous communities in Mexico , in particular, the Nahua communities of Alto Balsas.

Remittances and Business Development in Mexico

Data from recent Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF) studies indicate the growing magnitude and development potential of remittance flows in Latin America and the Caribbean .2 In 2002, Latin American and the Caribbean received approximately USD 32 billion, which represented an increase of 19.7% over 2001 and a 40% increase over the total flow of remittances in 2000. Globally, Latin America and the Caribbean are now the number one destination for remittances worldwide, and the region is responsible for more than 60% of the worldwide growth in remittances over the past three years. Based on a modest annual growth rate of 7%, the region will receive cumulative remittance inflows over this decade (2001-2010) in excess of USD 500 billion. Yet, spite the ample literature about migration and remittances in Mexico ; little is known about the actual effect of these flows in indigenous communities in Mexico in particular in the Nahua communities in Guerrero.

Estimates of the volume of remittances in Mexico take on greater importance in light of the devaluation of the peso; this is clear in the data for the period 1995--2002, when remittance flows increased 262 percent.3 The latest Central Bank report puts family remittances at $9.8 billion for 2002 and preliminary figures for 2003 are $13.2 billion (Mexican Central Bank, 2004). These financial flows associated with migration flows are also important at the state level given the specific spatial distribution of these flows in Mexico4 . For example in 1996 the state of Guerrero received USD 211.6 million in remittance flows while federal expenditures in education in Guerrero were USD 406.1 million, federal health expenditures were USD 121.4 million and poverty abatement programs amounted to a mere USD 11.8 million. In 2003, Guerrero received USD 686 million which is about 8 percent of its gross state product or the equivalent of USD 222.9 per capita5.

The indigenous Nahua communities in Alto Balsas, Guerrero, have had a very high national and international migration rate for more than 50 years, which attests to the importance of the contribution of remittances to the regional, community and household economies. In the last decades, internal migration has been accompanied by a successful production and commercialization of indigenous art (paintings in amate paper and ceramics) in Mexican tourist areas, but today the decline in the Mexican art market has discouraged seasoned and young painters (female and male) from continuing this practice. Instead, many prefer to migrate to the United States where employment is more remunerated even though their occupations are totally different from their true artistic potentialities. To understand why migration to the United States has not turned into an extension of their handicraft business, it is necessary to look at the production bottlenecks and to the use of the social capital created through the international migratory process.

The research literature based on several Mexican community studies indicates that U.S. earnings are mostly spent on current personal consumption and very little on productive investment.6 Despite this evidence, there is also evidence to support the opposite view. Several studies claim that there is some productive investment and local economic growth in some communities.7 We believe the mixed results stem partly from a methodological problem with the definition of productive investment versus current consumption. Education and home improvements may have a consumption component but they are also a form of productive investment. Education is investment in human capital while house improvements such as a cement floor decrease the likelihood of gastrointestinal diseases, which is a leading cause of infant mortality. Methodological issues aside, there are erroneous conceptualizations of female labor that have contributed to devalue its contributions to human development8 and the survival of the poor. One is the conceptualization of what paid and unpaid work is and the second is the wider range of human motivation other than self-interest in people’s choices, such as altruism, caring, fairness, collective responsibility, and solidarity (Beneria, 2003).

These narrow conceptualizations of female labor are a fundamental reason for the lack of evidence of productive investment from remittances in many communities that is implied in the myth of the so-called “ghost towns”9. Despite evidence that in some regions like the Caribbean more females migrate to the United States than males, it is assumed that young males have migrated and the only ones left in the sending communities are women, children and elderly people who do not generate much economic activity and therefore, the sending community is becoming a ghost town. This assertion is based on the common bias in economic analysis brought up by feminist economists who have “contributed to raising the problem of undercounting women’s work in national labor statistics and national income accounts” (Beneria, 2003). As stated by Beneria (2003) the typical story about a decrease in GNP when a man marries his housekeeper because she is not paid wage as a spouse reflects the problem of defining work. Indigenous women in particular are found at the intersection of unpaid work, participation in the informal sector along with collective responsibility and solidarity as additional motivations for economic behavior.

Indigenous women are found as key participants in the subsistence sector in many indigenous communities in Mexico . Many women in the rural sector are engaged in unpaid agricultural activities that are only becoming “visible” as men emigrate and women move into other types of work and hire out their traditional work such as food cultivation, wood gathering, animal husbandry, home garden maintenance, etc. Female participation in the informal sector also contributes to underestimating women’s work because these activities are not part of the national statistics. For example, there is a lack of reliable statistics of women’s participation in street food sale, handicraft production, and even self-employment. These activities financed in part or totally by remittance flows are not counted in national accounts. As a result the lack of access to credit continues to be a formidable barrier to the expansion of female economic activities. Although multilateral organizations are seeking to strengthen financial institutions both in migrant communities in the United States and in the countries of origin, it is unlikely that they will finance the developing of female small enterprises along the lines of the Grameen Bank targeted micro credit. It is necessary that studies on female migration and women left behind in the communities of origin highlight the role of women in generating and in the management of remittances received.

Finally, women’s participation in volunteer work is also problematic because it is difficult to separate domestic work from volunteer work as in collective food kitchens when the beneficiaries are immediate family and community members at the same time (Beneria:2003). Traditional practices in Nahua communities in Mexico such as tequio10 cannot be explained simply by appeals to self-interest. To the extent that human beings are also social beings, that is they have regard for the behavior, opinion and companionship of others, they will based their choices on considerations of other people’s choices (Fullbrook:2004).

There are a lot of customs and norms in indigenous communities that may defy the traditional economic notion of rationality that nonetheless increase the welfare of individuals and the community in general. Practices such as tequio may very well contribute to the increase in human development but if it not recognized as such and if there is an insistence in replacing such customs and norms with market mechanisms, it is quite possible that human development might actually decrease.

The presence of remittances attests to the fact that individual preferences are not driven solely my self-interest but rather by other motivations such as altruism, fairness and reciprocity. Therefore, models emphasizing individualism are inadequate to explain economic activity in indigenous communities where market-oriented behavior is more the exception rather than the norm. Nonetheless, globalization has brought about major economic changes including the increasing participation of women in the labor force even in societies where their “participation in paid work was traditionally low and socially unacceptable” (Beneria:2003). As a result many traditions and gender constructions are positively changing such as gender relations and women’s empowerment while in other cases the changes are more negative such as divorce, abandonment of children, infectious diseases, guilt about leaving their children behind, etc. All of these factors must be understood in order to assess the constraints facing women in these communities as they engage in market activities through the administration and generation of remittance flows.

The difficulties in the conceptualization of paid and unpaid activities as well as the influence of motives other than self-interest have obscured the role of women as administrators and generators of remittances. Not only female migration rates have increased in the last decade but female labor force participation rates in Mexico have also increased11. In the following section, we discuss the dynamics of women’s incorporation into economic activities in Alto Balsas, Mexico; in particular we focus on their activities as administrators and generators of remittance flows to their indigenous communities to shed some light on their role in community economic development.

Remittances, Human Development and rural self-employment in Alto Balsas

I paint, make dresses, candles …
What worries me? Nothing!
God gives me everything

—Angela, artisan and vendor

The study of the role of Nahua women as administrators and generators of remittances in an indigenous region with high migration in the south of Mexico revealed the importance of global processes in the economic and social restructuring of these indigenous communities, and in the dynamics of local labor which is transforming the traditional system of exchange and reciprocity that was a key component in family and community organization.

This qualitative study had two objectives: to shed light against the negative vision of migrant sending communities as “ghost towns” which negates individual choice in the various processes associated with migration; and, to show a view contrary to the reductionism present in developmental theories emphasizing local economic development induced by investment activities financed by remittances.

The Nahua region in Alto Balsas, Guerrero in Mexico can be characterized by the abandonment of agricultural production, the decrease in production and commercialization of handicrafts and by a highly diversified labor force that has replaced their traditional artistic skills with new skills suitable for the service sector and the national and international agribusiness. Under these conditions, a large fraction of this labor force is employed in non-agricultural activities and points out to migration as a strategy for accessing the transnational labor markets.

The myriad of access opportunities available to males and females can be seen along more than one hundred entry points along the border between Mexico and the United States12 . This characteristic presupposes significant changes in the traditional system of exchange and reciprocity based on collective labor also affected by the increasing monetization of their relationships based on solidarity. In the context of indigenous communities, the fact that males and females abandon their families and communities results in a paradox: the creation of a “labor shortage” in the community and household sector. This labor shortage is filled with local labor from those that for whatever reasons are not able to migrate or by a reorganization of household chores in other cases. This becomes visible in the construction sector (previously done under collective work), in domestic work (previously done by the extended family) and in the system of exchange and reciprocity known as tequio. Due to labor shortages in the farm, household and community relationships based on reciprocity are replaced by market relations and waged labor.

One of the principal factors that reinforce this trend is the influx of remittances from wage labor and commercial relationships associated with national and international migration13. The exodus of males and females in their prime working years or of entire families gives the appearance of “ghost towns” which is further reinforced by the presence of soil erosion which leads to the decline in slash and burn agricultural activities. Nonetheless, under the hot days of the tropics many economic activities are planned and developed which gives life to family and communal relationships in indigenous regions although some of them interfere with the network of exchange and reciprocity arrangements. These activities revitalized the local labor structure especially by generating female self-employment opportunities as well as temporary jobs.

Female strategies to maximize financial resources from migration are varied and they have been successful in preventing extreme poverty and in allowing for the presence of better-equipped homes and the creation of saving pools known as “solidarity banks”14 . From their perspective, women who do not migrate consider self-employment as a valuable option to the family changes due to migration activities in order to become less dependent on the flow of remittances and to assure the maintenance of the family under the absence of the husband or the sons or daughters. These women revalue their skills as they move from one activity to another as a way to establish their independence through the generation of their own incomes, thanks to which “nothing lacks”.

In similar fashion, we find women producing and commercializing traditional merchandise: handcrafts, bread, candles, etc. These women have relatives who have migrated so they resort to self-employment through the creation of small enterprises. Their traditional productive activities15 enhance the service sector in rural areas by starting family self-employment opportunities such as the provision of prepared food. Not long ago the streets and plazas in rural communities have started to be full of food vendors providing services throughout the whole day where it was almost impossible before to imagine such activities because incomes were too low.

Some of these women are “floating” merchants. They participate in the regional commercial structure by following the festivities cycle throughout the year. The periods of festivities associated to Catholic saints seem to be occasions for high consumption from the arrival of migrants to their communities of origin. Besides obtaining a share of the financial resources from remittances and migrant’s expenditures, women have invested in industrial equipment of the kind that facilitate their work such as in traditional bread making; in other cases, there is investment in raw materials for handcraft work or for candle manufacturing. During this cycle of festivities, women engage in these commercial activities traveled in groups accompanied by other women engage in similar activities and by their own small sons or daughters. They also count with their husbands help especially when the children have migrated. In such cases, the husbands are accepting their new roles and taking on household chores:

“Like she says, let’s work the traditional bread. She makes a living and I help. And you can see, I baked the bread, I pulled them out of the oven and she goes out and sells them with Doña Ricarda … So like she says, ‘here we go’ facing life” (husband of a handicraft woman making bread)

The husbands with migratory experience have experience significant changing in their traditional gender roles because they are no longer farmers nor do they are exclusively the sole providers in the household.

"Before I left, I could not cook, but once there I taught myself. There I washed my own clothes … like they trained me as a farmer … I couldn’t wash a shirt, let a woman wash it, right? So, to sweep and to help my wife? Me? No! But not now. After arriving in the United States I made a change. Now my wife goes to sell bread but I … here, we work the leaf (paint on amate paper) and we clean, sweep and wash the clothes. " (husband of a handicraft woman producing bread)

Women interpret such attitudes as a triumph in their long struggle that now gives them personal, affective and economic tranquility as opposed to previous attitudes embedded in sayings like “she has no permission to leave”. The change in gender roles perceptions is also promoted by the new occupations (labor diversification) emerging from the decline in agriculture and handicraft sectors.

Another type of business is related to women that have immigrated to the United States by their own choice to seek capital to return and carry on their economic projects in their communities of origin such as to open a Molino, a meat store, an automobile for public transportation, open a small grocery or tortilla store. It is interesting to note that these activities are geared toward making domestic life more comfortable or with relieving onerous work for other women so they can employ themselves in paid work such as handicraft work.

In general, women who have migrated and those who have stayed in their communities maximize their own resources and remittance to provide self-employment in the service and small enterprise sector and to invest in the construction sector. Many times, these women pressure their sons and daughters to build a house in their community of origin even when they may not be planning to come back. This negotiation holds the hope of a future return and at the same time it provides a peace of mind with respect to housing. This way, women have become as much consumers of construction services as of maize. The lack of maize production is also a sign of the displacement of a culture of self-consumption even though this trend is not yet as definitive due to the presence of home gardens and animal raising in most rural households.

Conclusions and Policy Suggestions

The jobs generated by the labor shortage left by migration in many communities as well as the self-employment generated is embedded in the so-called “informal sector” 16 and it is part of the larger world informal economy17. From a socio-economic perspective, self-employment and international migration are seen as survival strategies to confront the stagnant or null employment growth in the formal economy (Somavia, 2003). We believe that the case of the nahua women in the Alto Balsas reflects very closely how this global phenomenon affects a declining but not dying indigenous community. On the contrary, the dynamics of the local economy is such that it sustains itself by the influx of national and international remittances that circulate within the context of the exchange and reciprocity systems without losing its essential character of solidarity.

With respect to the effects of remittances in the region under study, we can say that the multiplier effects become visible in paid work activities in the agricultural, construction and service sectors where the demand for labor is visible due to the absence of relatives who previously covered those productive domestic and community activities. These are informal jobs but they are situated in the context of exchange and reciprocity where now the work is compensated monetarily but with strong preferences for hiring those who are poorer. It is possible that individual choices at the micro level do respond to the influx of remittances to the region where it has an effect in the reduction of the poor population by about 2 percent18.

Even when the economic strategy of generating employment within the informal economy gives women an opportunity to avoid extreme poverty, there is a lost of indigenous knowledge when skilled artisans and traders emigrate and employ themselves in productive activities that no longer rely on those skills as a permanent source of their livelihood. Thus, the knowledge accumulated through centuries of handicraft and artisan practices is lost forever.

Bibliography

Banco de México (2004). Annual Report. Mexico City:Mexico.

Durand, Jorge, and Douglas S. Massey. 1992. Mexican Migration to the United States : A Critical Review. Latin American Research Review , 27 (2): 3--42.

Durand, J., D. Massey and E. Parrado (1995) Migradollars and Development: A Reconsideration of the Mexican Case. International Migration Review, vol. 30, no.2.

Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas (2004), “Workers’ Remittances to Mexico ”, Business Frontier, Issue 1, 2004.

Fullbrook, E. (2004), “Are you rational?” in A Guide to What’s Wrong with Economics” edited by E. Fallbrook, Anthem Press: Winbledom Publishing Co., London, UK.

García, Martha (2002) Nómadas, viajeros y migrantes. La comunidad sin límites de la región nahua del Alto Balsas, Guerrero. Dissertation presented to the Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia for the Degree of Master of Social Anthropology.

Lazarte, Rolando (2000) El sector informal: una revisión conceptual bibliográfica. Problemas del Desarrollo, vol. 31, no. 121.

Multilateral Investment Fund ofInter-American Development Bank (MIF-IDB). 2003. Worker Remittances: An International Comparison. Prepared by Manuel Orozco. Washington , D.C: Multilateral Investment Fund.

Somavia, Juan (2003) Superar la pobreza mediante el trabajo, OIT.

Secretariat for the Commission for Labor Cooperation (2003), Executive Summary in “Labor Markets in North America : Main Changes since NAFTA”. Washington D.C.

Tokman, Victor (2001) De la informalidad a la modernidad, Chile, OIT.

World Bank, (2003) Estrategia de Desarrollo de los Estados del Sur de México

Zarate-Hoyos, G. and Scott Anderson (2005), “GIS Tracks Earning Sent Home by Mexican Migrants”, ArcUser, January-March 2005

NOTES

1 Remittances and Rural Development”. Discussion Paper, Latin American and the Caribbean Division. IAFD

2 MIF-IADB, 2003

3 Mexican Central Bank annual report

4 Zarate-Hoyos and Anderson (2005)

5 Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas (2004)

6 Durand, J, E. Parrado and D. Massey (1995) provide an extensive list of such studies.

7 Durand, J and D. Massey (1992) reviewed several of these studies.

8 There is ample literature on the concept of human development. Suffice it to say in this article that human development is understood as a vision of development beyond its material aspects without diminishing those aspects in reducing poverty and increasing the standard of living. For further discussion, see United Nations Human Development Reports since 1990.

9 “Migrant Exodus Bleeds Mexico’s Heartland”, New York Times, July 17, 2001. This notion is widely held and disseminated among the Mexican communication outlets.

10 The tequio practice is an expression of community solidarity determine by the customs of each ethnic region. The community laws determine whether this practice can be exercised to pay taxes as well as any conflict resolution arising from the execution of tequio.

11 Secretariat of the Commission for Labor Cooperation (2003)

12 The migration tradition of the nahua communities at least before the 1940s had succeeded in establishing migratory networks and permanent settlements in capital cities and tourist cities in Mexico through their participation in handicraft commerce. In contrast, the migration of the 1950s and 1960s when nahua males from different communities enlisted in the Bracero Program (1942-1964), their movements were not a simple extension of previous patterns. In any case, the principal factor affecting the decision to migrate is the search for employment and therefore their insertion in the labor markets is mostly in the agro-industry and service sectors. Most of the international nahua workers are located in at least 18 states of the American Union (García 2002).

13 Remittances in the indigenous communities under study seem to have a stable pattern at the regional level although they are not always so stable at the household level in terms of time or content. Remittances augment local incomes to satisfy household expenditures such as household maintenance, education, housing and health. There also seems to be a complementarity of remittances in-kind as they are used in the refurbishing of the home.

14 Another finding of this study is the communal function of savings banks as part of the survival strategies of households. These funds also act as emergency funds in case of unpredictable events such as health emergencies, or to relieve credit constraints for female-owned small businesses.

15 Field work revealed that the jobs generated by females as paid-work or as self-employment are found in six sectors of the economy; namely, agricultura, silvicultura and fishiery, manufacturing, comerse and restaurants, transportation, storage and communications; and financial, social and personal services.

16 Various interpretations recognize self-employment as an expression of the informal sector which includes workers “on their own”, “in micro-enterprises” or “in domestic work” (Tokman, 2001:22). As some authors point out, the informal sector is identified by certain occupations such as ambulatory sales, domestic service, household production, rural and urban, while others defined the informal sector by the level of remuneration in certain occupations; incorporating the concept of informality into the notion of “poverty” (Lazarte 2001:45). Even though studies about labor dynamics in informal markets tend to be entirely about the urban sector, the logic of this market is similar in the rural spaces which have been strongly hit by the crisis and decline in agricultural activities where the sector is losing relevancy in generating incomes and jobs.

17 The informal economy is characterized by its “low productivity and low skill level, low and irregular wages, long hours of work, small and undefined place of work, unhealthy working and unstable conditions, lack of access to information, markets, financial services and technology” (Somavia, 2003:33).

18 In answering the question about the effects of remittances on poverty based on the 2000 Mexican Population Census, the World Bank suggests in their report about Migration and poverty in the southern states in Mexico that “in those states where remittances are higher such as Guerrero and Oaxaca, the proportion of those in poverty is 2 percent lower for those households who received remittances” But the Bank goes even further by stating that “even though this number may not look large, it is similar to the impact from federal programs like PROCAMPO or PROGRESA (according to Census data)” and it is also similar to the contributions made to the municipalities through the Municipal Social Infrastructure Fund (FISM). Thus, to reduce poverty, private transfers through remittances are as important as public ones (World Bank, 2003:2).

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