El Pueblo is Always With Us: Diasporic Indigenous Oaxacan Transborder Connections and Resistance In Ohio

Extensive research on “Mexican” immigrants coming from the U.S.-Mexico border tends to characterize this population as a monolith, ignoring intragroup hierarchies built upon the long history of anti-Blackness and anti-Indigeneity embedded within the colonial structures in Mexico. While there is a growing body of research on Indigenous Oaxacan populations in traditional migrant-receiving destinations like California, little research exists outside these regions, where a growing Indigenous Oaxacan population lives. In these new destinations, a small Mexican – and even smaller Indigenous – population may pose unique challenges to identity formation and cultural connections. To better understand how Indigenous migrants from Mexico sustain and reimagine their culture after leaving their pueblos, this study explores the narratives of diasporic Indigenous Oaxacan people in a less-studied region of the United States, Ohio. This work is part of a broader scholarly response in the field of Critical Latinx Indigeneities to Latindad's erasure of present-day Indigenous communities. I examine how diasporic Indigenous Oaxacan migrants in Ohio (1) form their identity while living in a region with a small Mexican population and a majority non-Hispanic white population, and (2) highlight modes in which this community carries and reimagines their pueblo culture. 10 semi-structured interviews were conducted with first-, 1.5-, and second-generation Indigenous Oaxacan migrants. In this thesis, I argue diasporic Indigenous Oaxacans face challenges in being visible and understood by community outsiders in the Midwest, yet resist the stifling of their culture as these residents engage in intergenerational transborder placemaking experiences. This work is important for broader Mexican migration studies as insight into a less-studied region and population is captured for future research and provides context for the growing diaspora.

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