Popul Environ (2016) 37:464–478 DOI 10.1007/s11111-015-0247-2 RESEARCH BRIEF
Can indigenous transborder migrants affect environmental governance in their communities of origin? Evidence from Mexico Marı´a G. Lira1 • James P. Robson2 Daniel J. Klooster2
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Published online: 28 September 2015 Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015
Abstract Despite high rates of out-migration, Mexican indigenous communities play a crucial role in biodiversity conservation. However, little is known about migrants’ role in environmental management. This research brief explores the case of the Pure´pecha of San Pedro Ocumicho, Michoaca´n, and its transborder community in the Coachella Valley of California. We find that migrants maintain strong cultural ties to their community of origin. However, many are undocumented, are unable to access steady and well-paid employment, and would be unable to return to California were they to visit Mexico. Furthermore, government structures in Ocumicho are weak, providing few opportunities for migrants to contribute. These factors currently preclude migrants from influencing environmental decision making in their home community. Our findings point to the need for more comprehensive and longitudinal studies to better document and explain the variations in migrant support for environmental governance in their communities of origin. Keywords Environment Environmental governance Mexico Michoaca´n Migration Pure´pecha Remittances
& Marı´a G. Lira
[email protected] 1
Posgrado en Geografı´a, Centro de Investigaciones en Geografı´a Ambiental, Universidad Nacional Auto´noma de Me´xico, Antigua Carretera a Pa´tzcuaro 8701, Colonia Ex-Hacienda de San Jose´ de la Huerta, 58190 Morelia, Michoaca´n, Mexico
2
Department of Environmental Studies, University of Redlands, 1200 East Colton Ave, P.O. Box 3080, Redlands, CA 92373, USA
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Introduction Approximately 28 million hectares, more than 10 % of Mexico’s terrestrial territory, are owned and managed by indigenous groups (Boege 2008; Barnes 2009). Some of these groups have achieved sustainable resource management through adapted agricultural, forestry, and conservation practices (Primack et al. 1997; Vela´zquez et al. 2003a; Bray et al. 2004; Robson 2007). Many others suffer from poor resource management, exacerbated by corruption, internal disputes, and conflicts with neighbors (Challenger 1998; Klooster 2003; Merino 2004; Dura´n et al. 2011). Community-level institutions shape these different outcomes (Chapela 2005; Robson 2007). Boege (2008) documents more than 6000 indigenous ejidos and comunidades1 across the country, in which members are collective owners. Assemblies of community members govern these territories, electing peers to represent them in transactions with markets and government agencies and to coordinate collective labor obligations for projects of general interest (Klooster 2013). Communities manage their resources successfully (or not) amid a complexity of factors. These include an initial set of social institutions, experience solving prior collective action problems, clarity of membership, number of members, value of resources, security of community territory, internal divisions, and the actions of government agencies and other outside actors (see Ostrom 1990; Klooster 2000). National and international migration, in turn, profoundly affects existing community institutions and a community’s ability to develop new ones (Robson and Berkes 2011b; Robson and Wiest 2014; Klooster 2013). An estimated 4–7 % of Mexicans who speak an indigenous language live in the USA (Boege 2008), and indigenous strongholds throughout Mexico have been affected by migration, many severely (Klooster 2013). Scholars have long debated the impact that migration to the USA can have on sending communities in rural Mexico (Jones 1998; Taylor 1999; De Haas 2010); specifically whether it benefits these regions through the flow of remittances (Cohen 2004, 2005; Taylor and Wyatt 1996; McKenzie and Rapoport 2007) or increases inequalities and dependence on continued migration (Lipton 1980; Rubenstein 1992; Binford 2003). In particular, migration scholars debate the role of transborder networks linking migrant communities in the USA with hometowns in Mexico. They note that these networks can channel investments to community activities and infrastructure and sometimes achieve significant influence over economic, political, and cultural issues in migrant-sending areas (Cohen 2005; Smith 2006; Schu¨tze 2014). Such findings add credence to the views of international organizations, such as the World Bank, that migrants can act as ‘‘vital agents of international development’’ (Glick Schiller and Faist 2010). 1
Ejidos are collective land grants rooted in the agrarian reforms following the Mexican Revolution of 1910. Comunidades are recognitions of long-standing collective land ownership. In both cases, a group of commoners are collective owners of a territory, which may range in size from hundreds to tens of thousands of hectares.
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Yet when it comes to issues related to a community’s physical territory, we have little collective understanding as to how transborder migrants connect (or not) to hometown environmental governance—a term we use here to indicate the combination of family practices, formal and informal village land-use rules, village government practices, and village interactions with state and federal land management programs that together affect the use and management of a sending community’s natural resources (Robson 2010; Klooster 2013; see also Lemos and Agrawal 2006). A developing literature does tell us that migration can challenge environmental governance in sending regions by reducing the labor pool that underpins resource management and conservation practices (Merino 2004: Meyerson et al. 2007; Robson and Berkes 2011a), or offer conservation opportunities through patterns of agricultural abandonment that lead to forest recovery (Klooster 2003; Aide and Grau 2004). We also know that migration disrupts community social organization around resource use and management by placing specific strains on local governance systems (Robson and Berkes 2011b; Robson and Wiest 2014; Klooster 2013). Yet there is far less published work to show how transborder
Fig. 1 Location of study sites in Mexico and USA
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indigenous migrants participate in and influence environmental governance ‘‘back home.’’ We address this gap in the literature with an analysis of the Purepecha indigenous community of San Pedro Ocumicho, located in the central Mexican state of Michoaca´n, and their transborder community, located in the Coachella Valley, California. The research brief is structured as follows. A run through of our study methods precedes a results section that describes the governance structure and migration dynamics of Ocumicho, the hometown’s most pressing territorial governance issues, and the main factors that determine migrant involvement in environmental governance efforts at the community level. Discussion focuses on the challenges facing indigenous transborder communities to shape environmental outcomes in sending regions, comparing and contrasting the findings from Ocumicho with our observations from ongoing work with Zapotec and Chinantec communities in Oaxaca, southern Mexico. This allows us to form some initial thoughts on the variations and potential models that home communities are using (or not) to integrate migrants and return migrants into environmental governance structures, and provide some recommendations for future research.
Methods To identify an indigenous transborder community reachable from our bases in Redlands, California, and Morelia, Michoaca´n, we contacted members of Michoaca´n Home Town Associations registered with the Institute of Mexicans Abroad (IME 2012), snowballing until we were able to establish contact with members of the community of San Pedro Ocumicho living in the Coachella Valley of California. Exploratory ethnographic fieldwork was subsequently conducted in both the hometown of San Pedro Ocumicho and its transborder community in California (Fig. 1), and involved a mix of participant observation and semistructured interviews. Ocumicho (Michoaca´n, Me´xico) was visited several times in August 2012, February 2013, March 2013, and February 2014. The migrant settlement of ‘‘Duroville’’ (Thermal, California) was visited on multiple occasions from October to December 2012. Seven in-depth interviews were conducted with migrants living in Duroville, three women and four men, ranging from 35 to 70 years of age. These interviews focused on the following areas: life within the transborder community; linkages with the hometown; level of awareness about hometown issues; responsibilities of migrants in hometown governance; and the role that migrants play in hometown decision making around forest and agricultural use and management. In Ocumicho, nine in-depth interviews were held with members of the communal authority and a selection of town residents. Seven interviewees were with men and two with women, between the ages of 20 and 70 years. We covered these themes: contemporary land tenure and forest management issues; the participation of resident and migrant community members in natural resource management decisions; migrant interest and participation in community affairs; and hometown linkages with the transborder community in California.
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Time constraints, the difficulty in locating migrants, and establishing rapport precluded a larger sample size of interviews.2 Nevertheless, our unit of analysis is not a population of individuals, but rather the institutions and general patterns of engagement comprising a transborder community. Our methods thus provide sufficient data to describe the general parameters of the Ocumicho–Duroville transborder community. Data were coded and analyzed through a process that allowed themes to be read across interviews, for associations to be identified between such themes and other data categories, and for theoretical insights to be refined based on those relationships (after Bernard 2005).
Results San Pedro Ocumicho is a community of approximately 3500 inhabitants (INEGI 2010), located on the Pure´pecha Plateau in the central Mexican state of Michoaca´n (Fig. 2). As an indigenous community, Ocumicho maintains a level of autonomy in its civic and communal affairs. The highest government authority is the ‘‘Asamblea’’ (Assembly), where all community rights-holders are expected to participate in community decision making. Key governance positions include a ‘‘Jefe de Tenencia’’ (Village Mayor), responsible for issues inside the urban zone, a ‘‘Representante de Bienes Comunales’’ (Common Property Representative) responsible for management of the community’s territorial resources, and a ‘‘Consejo de Vigilancia’’ (Oversight Council) tasked with patrolling common property areas and reviewing the actions of the common property representative. All rights-holders are expected to take part in the Assembly (convened every month), give money for celebrations, and participate in faenas—the unpaid labor days used for completing community projects and public works. However, no sanctions are imposed for failure to participate in the assembly, with the average turnout for regular community meetings a little over 100 individuals. This accounts for just 6 % of the total male population, pointing to the small number of Ocumicho’s comuneros fully active in communal affairs and governance. Within the Pure´pecha region, Ocumicho is one of the communities to have best maintained its local language, customs, and religious institutions, and some 90 % of Ocumicho residents speak Pure´pecha (INEGI 2010). However, while cultural identity remains strong, local livelihoods are precarious. Local census data show that half of Ocumicho inhabitants of working age were without paid employment in 2010 (INEGI 2010). Scarce and poorly paid work opportunities have seen many Ocumichenses (people from Ocumicho) migrate to the USA.
2
Most members of the Ocumicho community in Duroville are undocumented. When we conducted interviews, residents of the trailer park were in the process of being relocated, which probably enhanced their feelings of mistrust and vulnerability.
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Fig. 2 Location of San Pedro Ocumicho, Michoaca´n, Mexico
Key issues facing Ocumicho’s forest and agricultural lands Ocumicho’s territory covers 7152 ha, which includes approximately 4000 ha of pine, oak, and mixed pine–oak forests found at an altitudinal range of 1700–2000 m.a.s.l., with the remainder consisting of agricultural lands (Fig. 3). Forests are divided into common property forest (about 1500 ha) and an area of small, private parcels held in individual usufruct by some community members (about 2500 ha). Interviewees perceive the common property forests as being heavily degraded, noting reductions in forest area, a decrease in pines, and an increase in oak. This is understood to be the result of poorly regulated timber and firewood extraction, and illegal logging by both community members and groups from nearby towns. Poor regulation of these forest areas appears indicative of limited social organization and deficient commons institutions at the community level. The privately held forest
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Fig. 3 Ocumicho’s territory showing location of forest and agricultural lands
areas, in contrast, respond to family management and are generally considered to be both denser and in better condition. The community does not use faena labor for projects within its common property forests, and despite institutional arrangements being in place to guide management—including community-devised rules around forest access and use—poor application and enforcement undermines their impact. This failure in collective action is exacerbated by limited financial and policy support from state- and federallevel government agencies. The oversight council carries out constant patrolling of the community’s territory in an effort to prevent illegal logging, but is confronted by loggers from Hue´cato and other nearby communities who work mostly at night and are often armed. Farming remains Ocumicho’s principal economic activity, with maize, beans, and squash the traditional staples. However, Ocumicho farmlands are marginal, of
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low productivity and difficult to work. For several years, Ocumicho has been involved in a legal and sometimes violent battle with the neighboring ejido of Tangancı´cuaro. Ocumicho claims the return of 477 ha of land known as ‘‘Llano de Pejo,’’ which they argue was unfairly given to Tangancı´cuaro in 1965.3 This area was the community’s most productive land, and its loss contributed to a downturn in Ocumicho’s local economy and increased migration to the USA. With a reduced labor pool, families found it difficult to continue farming, and many plots were abandoned or neglected. In the south part of the town, plots have been rented to a big agricultural company from Tangancı´cuaro,4 with little oversight from community authorities. More recently, residents have taken to extracting local clay and organic topsoil for sale to brick factories and nurseries in neighboring towns. This leaves affected areas infertile and has become a key concern locally. The role of Ocumicho migrants in local environmental governance Limited work and low pay has been a key push factor in encouraging Ocumichenses to migrate as undocumented wage labor to the USA, a pattern reflected more widely in Michoaca´n, which has sustained high levels of out-migration over several decades (CONAPO 2012). The first US-bound migrants left Ocumicho in the 1960s. The flows northward began to reach significant levels from the 1990s onwards. Paradoxically, the community’s resident population increased from about 1500 in 1960 (INEGI 1960) to about 3500 in 2010, with the decline in population through out-migration offset by high fertility rates during this same period. But migration has left the town with fewer adult members of a productive age, with two-fifths of current residents aged under 4 or over 65 (INEGI 2010). Initially, male-dominated, short-term, and circular, over time migration has come to include women, entire families, and seemingly permanent sojourns. Ocumicho’s migrants settled in Florida, Pennsylvania, and California. Duroville, a trailer park in the Coachella Valley of Southern California, is home to the largest group. When we visited in late 2012, the park hosted close to 500 trailers, the majority inhabited by farmworkers, of whom approximately two-thirds were Purepechans from Ocumicho. Ocumichenses in Duroville have formed a close-knit group that is reflective of Pure´pecha culture but also provides (largely undocumented) migrants with a sense of protection, familiarity, and solidarity. While Ocumichenses in the Coachella Valley now form a sizeable transborder community, the degree to which they contribute to, and participate in, hometown affairs has been limited. While migrants send money to help finance the annual 3
Ocumicho lacked official title to this land, and in 1965, a presidential decree gave the 477 ha to Tangancı´cuaro, despite it being occupied by villagers from Ocumicho at the time. Confrontations continued until 1981, when Tangancicuaro members, supported by army and police, forced Ocumicho inhabitants out.
4
This company specializes in growing potatoes and broccoli among other crops. According to interviewees, the company makes a good profit from the cash crops they grow on Ocumicho lands, yet the rents they pay are very low (approximately $6000 pesos or US$370 per hectare per year). In the beginning, the company hired Ocumichenses as farmworkers, but recently they started hiring people from neighboring towns who are willing to ‘‘work harder for less money’’ (F. Ortiz, 50 years old. Ocumicho, February 24, 2013).
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religious celebrations or occasionally to help cover the costs of specific religious cargos, they are not named or obligated to carry out communal service positions in person, or to pay for missed faenas. The closest that migrants have come to creating a transborder governance institution is through the ‘‘Pure´pecha Committee,’’ although this has been established to help meet the needs of migrants living in the Coachella Valley rather than the home community in Ocumicho. The Committee is yet to be registered in either Mexico or in the USA as a hometown association or club de oriundos. Members of the ‘‘Pure´pecha Committee’’ expressed concerns about the ongoing degradation of Ocumicho’s community forest, problems around the transfer of land rights, and the industrial-style farming being practiced by outsiders renting community lands. These concerns matched views expressed by Ocumicho residents, who argued that migrants in the USA could and should be approached to help fund forest management and restoration efforts. Nevertheless, migrant involvement in promoting improved resource use and environmental management has not been forthcoming. We heard of only one migrant approached by the community to help hire people to patrol communal forest areas, and no migrants being approached to promote or encourage more sustainable farming practices. Both migrants and community residents share concerns about local environmental issues, but presently no institutional framework is in place by which the flow of resources and ideas between Ocumicho’s transborder community and hometown authorities can be coordinated. Interviewee responses suggest that multiple barriers presently restrict or limit the participation of migrants in environmental governance in Ocumicho. At the top of the list is the lack of social organization in Ocumicho. As one respondent explained, ‘‘The important thing is to organize first here…because this is going to be the base. It is necessary to build very well the base so it doesn’t fall. After that we can call them [the migrants]. If we are not organized here and they send money, where is that money going to go?’’ (Herlindo Margarito, 65 years old. Ocumicho, March 10th, 2013). Yet even if formal requests were made on a regular basis to those residing north of the border, our data raise doubts as to whether migrants are willing and able to fund community-level investments in areas other than the cultural and religious celebrations they have supported to date. Migrants are no longer dependent on the community’s forests and fields for their main livelihood and thus have less of an incentive to provide financial support. Furthermore, there may be a divergence of interest around the use of natural resources; residents believe migrants underestimate the dependency that local people have on forest resources, and fail to appreciate the challenges that the community face in addressing and tackling forest degradation and changing patterns of land use. Poverty levels among migrants pose another barrier. Despite their concerns over what is happening in Ocumicho, the ability of migrants to provide anything more than moral support is constrained by a difficult economic situation, and the pressure to support growing families on relatively low wages: ‘‘They (migrants in the USA) are watching what they have there. They worry about their families and we have to worry about what we have here. We do not know how they are there and they do not
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know how we are here. They will not care if there are trees or not. They do not worry about that, only us here (in Ocumicho)’’ (Carlos, 48 years old. Returned migrant, after 30 years in the US. Ocumicho, February 24th, 2013). Obstacles to travel and communication with the home community are inhibiting migrants’ participation in environmental governance. Most Ocumichenses in the USA lack legal residence papers, and they cannot easily travel back to Ocumicho. Knowledge of and appreciation for hometown issues and realities is most evident among the few who have legal US residence and able to travel freely between the two countries. Raul Talavera is one such individual, and as he explained: ‘‘[Migrants without papers] know only what they hear because they cannot come to see and participate in the meetings. We go and tell them, but when they hear something they always wonder if that is true or false. People are not very sure to support the causes or not. It’s not the same as coming here and being present.’’ (R. Talavera, 72 years old. Migrant since 1980. Ocumicho, March 10th, 2013).
Discussion In recent decades, Mexico’s forests have been under increased pressure from immoderate and unsustainable use (Challenger 1998; Dura´n et al. 2011). In Michoaca´n, 40 % of the state’s 1.5 million hectares of temperate forest have been degraded with reported increases in secondary vegetation (Guerrero et al. 2008). Indigenous comunidades and ejidos are recognized as central actors in environmental governance (Boege 2008); yet, many of these communities and their territories are being transformed by high rates of migration and changing resource practices. Findings from this exploratory research do not support the assumption that outmigration will necessarily reduce demand on the natural resource base and thus aid sustainability (Meyerson et al. 2007; Grau and Aide 2007). They do support findings from elsewhere (Curran 2002; Robson and Berkes 2011a; Aguilar-Støen et al. 2014; Gray and Bilsborrow 2014) that the effects of out-migration and remittances on agriculture and other resource practices are nonlinear, mixed, and complex. Migration does not simply reduce the pressure of population on resources, but rather transforms that pressure in complex ways. In the case of Ocumicho, these transformations include land rental, the liquidation of assets through the commercialization of local soils, and a decreased ability to monitor and protect communal resources. Scholars have noted remarkable instances where migrants have affected change in other indigenous communities, whether in the Pure´pecha region (Schu¨tze 2014) or in other parts of Mexico (Waterbury 1999), including cases where migrant-led community investment leveraged a transfer of political power to migrants in transborder communities (Smith 2006). Some suggest that migrant resources could enable villages to persist and even flourish despite the depopulation of rural areas (Fox and Rivera-Salgado 2004; Cohen 2005), integrating migrants into community governance from afar, and getting an injection of resources and new ideas from their members abroad. This includes hope that migrants could provide flows of money,
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knowledge, and other resources to help shape and support environmental governance for migrant-sending towns and villages across Mexico (see Klooster 2013). In Ocumicho, we did not find this to be the case. The prominence of religious celebrations and other cultural traditions suggest a well-organized and cohesive community, but in other areas of civic and communal governance, including management of the community’s environmental commons, there is a marked absence of social organization. Ocumicho’s institutions are adequate to direct migrant resources within families and for collective ritual activities such as patron saint celebrations. But local institutions have not been able to channel migrant resources into natural resource management. Ocumichense migrants to the USA expressed an interest in solving environmental problems in their community of origin, but we detected very little evidence of migrants affecting environmental governance decisions. This case resonates with our evolving understanding of the obstacles that inhibit migrants, both individually and collectively, from influencing or responding to hometown territorial and land-use issues. For migrants from Ocumicho, investment in environmental governance is severely handicapped by weak initial institutional arrangements at the hometown level, which inhibit the adaptations needed to fully involve migrants in decision making and investments. The Ocumicho experience contrasts with cases we have studied in Oaxaca, which started with stronger community institutions and are thus better able to develop internal rules to involve migrants in community governance (Robson 2010; Klooster 2013). Yet even here, examples of practical support for specific natural resource management and conservation activities have been rare (Robson 2010). Through our Oaxacan work, it is becoming apparent that many migrants still isolate themselves from local customs, commit to building a life in the USA, and reduce their participation in hometown activities over time (Robson and Wiest 2014). And even when a strong sense of commitment does exists among first-generation migrants, this is less easily transferred to second- and third-generation migrants raised elsewhere, for whom it is harder to forge the ties that underpin transborder resource flows and investments. What this tells us is that Indigenous Mexicans, living as undocumented migrants in the USA, are limited in what they are able to achieve as part of transborder communities. This adds an important caveat to the idea that migration has the potential for driving development in sending regions and communities (Cohen 2004, 2005; Taylor and Wyatt 1996; Taylor 1999; McKenzie and Rapoport 2007) or that transborder linkages can significantly mitigate the effects of migration on environmental governance (Klooster 2013). Furthermore, migrants are subject to changing US immigration policy. Increased border enforcement imposes immense costs on migrants wishing to visit their community of origin and then return to their work, residence, and families in the USA. This study supports research among migrant-sending communities in other parts of Mexico (Jones 2009, 2014; Robson 2010) that shows the shift from circular to more permanent forms of migration can weaken migrant investments ‘‘back
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home.’’ For many living in the USA, migration has indeed become a one-way trip (Fox 2007). Our findings in Ocumicho also add to a growing number of case studies demonstrating potential patterns within the diversity of community approaches to involving migrants in local governance. It differs from previous findings in Oaxaca (Mutersbaugh 2002; Robson 2010; Klooster 2013; Robson and Wiest 2014) where communities specify numerous obligations for absent members—requiring migrants to participate in community decision making and to contribute to community-level investments, limit sojourn times, and pay fines for missed assemblies and communal work obligations. None of that exists in Ocumicho, a community that exerts very little pressure on migrants to meet obligations to the community, recognizing a right of return regardless of compliance with faena and cargo obligations.5 In doing so, this case study echoes the call for a better typology of transborder communities (Klooster 2013), suggesting especially the importance of initial social capital around natural resource management, population size, the economic status of migrants in the USA, and specific (and evolving) migration patterns and dynamics, as factors that can affect the role migrants play in their communities of origin. We hope that this exploratory piece of research is just the beginning of more substantive and long-term work in this area.
Conclusion In the case of migrants from Ocumicho, investment in hometown environmental governance is severely handicapped by limited economic opportunities in the USA, low levels of social organization, and weak institutional arrangements at the community level, which inhibit the institutional adaptations needed to fully involve migrants in hometown governance and investment. Furthermore, increased US border enforcement changes previous circular forms of migration to more permanent forms, and this severely limits the extent of support that transborder migrants are able to provide. These realities combine to reduce the potential for transborder migrant communities to invest in natural resource management and conservation in their home communities, and to use migration as a means for constructing alternatives in the face of crisis (Barkin 2012). Such lessons add important context to our understanding of the migration–development nexus. This case contrasts with more optimistic accounts from elsewhere in Mexico (Klooster 2013); in Ocumicho, 5 One of the best known examples of Pure´pecha communities with a very high level of environmental governance is Nuevo San Juan Parangaricutiro (Vela´zquez et al. 2003b; Orozco-Quintero and DavidsonHunt 2009). The community of Chera´n, mobilized in 2011 against a criminal group that exploited the common forest and increased the violence inside the village. The community drove the criminals out and started a legal battle to elect their municipal government based on their own habits and customs, without the intervention of any political party (Arago´n 2013). In Santa Fe de la Laguna and San Jero´nimo Purenche´cuaro, environmental governance is rather muddled (Klooster 2003). The role of migration in the variations in environmental governance among communities such as these is worthy of additional research.
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migration has done more to undermine possibilities for indigenous environmental governance than to strengthen it. Acknowledgments A National Science Foundation Award # 1127534 provided funding for our fieldwork in Coachella Valley. Lira thanks CONACYT (Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnologı´a), Professor Douglas Flewelling, and the Master of Science in Geographic Information Systems Program at University of Redlands (UofR) for making possible her research visit to UofR. Thanks to Posgrado en Geografı´a and Centro de Investigaciones en Geografı´a Ambiental at Universidad Nacional Auto´noma de Me´xico. Thanks also to Adrian Poloni and Gerardo Martinez De Luna for their valuable help with our fieldwork and Beatriz Gonza´lez for introducing us to migrant contacts in Duroville, California. Thanks to Ocumicho’s local authorities for their support during visits to the community. We also thank anonymous reviewers for their comments.
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