The present ethnographic research examines a diverse group of migrants from the Macro- Maya culture, originally from Yucatan, Chiapas and Guatemala. Findings confirm that there is a longstanding migration pattern in which the Maya have engaged in order to survive, and, now, the Maya have extended these roads of survival to the California Bay Area in the United States. This research aims to address the cultural, political and social migration conditions Maya from Guatemala and Mexico have face both historically and at present. The research questions that guide this research are: How have Maya from Guatemala, Chiapas and Yucatan experienced their migration trajectory northward and what are the social and economic factors that propel these movements? What are the similarities and differences in the migration experiences of my participants? How do these migration experiences support or undermine the representations of Maya that circulate in various American discourses?I argue that the Maya migrations to the United States have been instigated by the atrocities committed against Maya in Guatemala, Yucatan and Chiapas and the economic marginalization each group has each faced create a movement toward a specific type of refugee or economic exile-- a refugee that utilizes movement as a form of resistance and survival. Furthermore, my data leads to the claim that these migrations must be understood as a diaspora. Establishing economic niches and "hidden" communities in the United States, the experiences of the Maya who share their stories in this research illuminate the differences and similarities among the Maya coming from Mexico and Guatemala. Through my participants' stories, I argue that there is no monolithic "Maya" or "migrant" and, rather, I put forth an analysis of the "unlikely Maya". My participants share a diversity of experiences that undermines the discourses that perpetuate stereotypes permeating monolithic representations of the Maya. The ethnography includes two levels of observation. In the micro level observations I examine the alternatives lifestyles available and desired by the participants and their trajectories and historical background. The macro level observations include an analysis of the localized struggles of the Maya migrants in relation to wider societal phenomena. More specifically, in the macro analysis their stories are contextualized in the political environment, the broader immigrant struggles and in dialogue with various discourses, such as mass media, labor and government. The Maya participants in this research are undocumented workers. In order to survive in the U.S., they need to harvest a lifestyle that ensures anonymity. Contrary to the discourse on immigration that pins migrants as the "poor rural Maya", the "uneducated non-English speaker or non-Spanish- speaker", or the "victims of history", my qualitative data shows the strong presence of a counterculture migrant community hidden from mainstream representation. The unlikely Maya is not a group of rural individuals who are defenseless against a hegemonic order, but, rather, they are rebels of a system and survivors of social and political forces. I contend that their migration can be understood not only as a result of a survival strategy but, rather, their "illegal" intrusion in to the U.S. is as a form of resistance

This richly detailed reference offers a strengths-based survey of Latinx immigrant experience in the United States. Spanning eleven countries across the Americas and the Caribbean, the book uses a psychohistorical approach using the words of immigrants at different processes and stages of acculturation and acceptance. Coverage emphasizes the sociopolitical contexts, particularly in relation to the US, that typically lead to immigration, the vital role of the Spanish language and cultural values, and the journey of identity as it evolves throughout the creation of a new life in a new and sometimes hostile country. This vivid material is especially useful to therapists working with Latinx clients reconciling current and past experience, coping with prejudice and other ongoing challenges, or dealing with trauma and loss. Included among the topics: · Argentines in the U.S.: migration and continuity. · Chilean Americans: a micro cultural Latinx group. · Cuban Americans: freedom, hope, endurance, and the American Dream. · The drums are calling: race, nation, and the complex history of Dominicans. · The Obstacle is the Way: resilience in the lives of Salvadoran immigrants in the U.S. · Cultura y familia: strengthening Mexican heritage families. · Puerto Ricans on the U.S. mainland. With its multiple layers of lived experience and historical analysis, Latinx Immigrant, is inspiring and powerful reading for sociologists, economists, mental health educators and practitioners, and healthcare providers.

Terence Kilbourne Hopkins (1929-1997) was a hidden gem of the field of world-systems studies who contributed indispensably to its foundation amid a lifelong collaboration and friendship with Immanuel Wallerstein. His pedagogical humanism, methodological rigor, and scientific commitment to social change, merged with his creatively flexible administrative skills to found the Graduate Program in Sociology at Binghamton University (SUNY). The student-centered, autonomous program fostered the formation of critically-minded scholars who pursue transdisciplinary sociology while fusing deeply personal commitments to long-term, large-scale social change. In this significantly updated twentieth anniversary second edition of Mentoring, Methods, and Movements, Terence K. Hopkins’s former students organizing and contributing to a colloquium in his honor a few months before his untimely passing in January 1997 share key insights about what made him so unique and impactful in shaping their practices of engaged sociology—informed by an always open, dynamic, and self-reinventing World-Systems Analysis. The new edition includes a comprehensive chronological works/citations bibliography of Terence K. Hopkins, a new postscript essay reflecting and building on other contributions in the volume, updates on the contributors’ background and works, a reorganized photo gallery and cover design, and a detailed subject index that can be a helpful guide to the many aspects of Hopkins’s thought and pedagogy from the points of view of his students/colleagues. From the Inside "For several years now we sociologists have heard much talk about structure and agency .... This distinction can make little sense to students of Hopkins, who always insisted that social structures are formed, reproduced, and reformed by the agency of actors. ..."-Walter Goldfrank, U.C. Santa Cruz "How did Terry do it?" -William G. Martin, Binghamton University "Hopkins's insistent questioning opened the door to the creation of an alternate apparatus of discourse, the very flexibility of which allows the emerging debates of world-scale historical social sciences to be joined ...."-Ravi A. Palat, Binghamton University "... Hopkins was attacking the idiographic-nomothetic distinction through the pedagogy. The pedagogy assumed that the student had to work hard as a student "inventing" and then had to continue inventing forever after."-Immanuel Wallerstein, Yale University "But then again I cannot think of a better way to reflect on Hopkins's work than approaching it from a personal perspective. That is how he always approached his own work, after all, and he encouraged us to do so as well." -Resat Kasaba, University of Washington "... The vision of methods Terence Hopkins has offered includes this invitation to a special sort of imaginative social action: think the past to make a past with the purpose of making the future by thinking a future." -Richard Lee, Binghamton University "This is not going to be a personal speech, but the invisible hand of Terence K. Hopkins lies about me and in most of what I've written since I left Binghamton. ... " -Philip McMichael, Cornell University "The study of regionalism vis-a-vis globalism parallels the two poles of Terence Hopkins's own intellectual development which began with the study of small group interaction and culminated with a focus on the dynamics of the world-system. ..." -Elizabeth McLean Petras, Scholar and Author "... even the Hopkins phrases were not immune to skeptical support. Exhibiting his characteristic penchant for sustained auto-critique, Hopkins wrote in the margins of the paper ..." -Beverly Silver, Johns Hopkins University "... He was a tireless and merciless critic. Yet I never felt demeaned or belittled. ... He pounded home time and again that it was not helpful to view race and class as binary opposites, ...." -Rod Bush (1945-2013), St. John's University "... key points in the work of Hopkins elucidate productive ways of meeting the criteria set by feminists for the study of gender. ...World-systems analysis has thus far not dealt with subjective and objective, self and society as dimensions of the modern world-system. Critique of these as discrete units of analysis is implicit in world-systems analysis, but focused attention on these is the contribution of feminist theory to the discussion of unit of analysis."-Nancy Forsythe, Feminist Scholar and Activist "... The time I was fortunate to spend with him allowed me to have a sense of his profound concern about the welfare of humanity and commitment to the cause of the unprivileged ...." -Lu Aiguo, Inst. of World Economies and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Science, Beijing "It was not what Hopkins actually said to me that mattered, not his educational program nor even his parenthetical letters, but what he is (and now what he was), a style of being alive, a magical dance he does with his body or with you or with parts of who he was ... a dance in which he laughs, turning away just enough to help you see it is not you he is laughing at, but us." -Evan Stark, Rutgers University "Gathered in this volume ... are sociologically imaginative world-systems analyses of Terence K. Hopkins, amid the world-historical public issues that deeply troubled him personally and are even more prevalent today." -Mohammad H. Tamdgidi, UMass Boston /OKCIR

As a free trade zone and Latin America's most popular destination, Cancún, Mexico, is more than just a tourist town. It is not only actively involved in the production of transnational capital but also forms an integral part of the state's modernization plan for rural, indigenous communities. Indeed, Maya migrants make up over a third of the city's population. A Return to Servitude is an ethnography of Maya migration within Mexico that analyzes the foundational role indigenous peoples play in the development of the modern nation-state. Focusing on tourism in the Yucatán Peninsula, M. Bianet Ca.

Over the latter half of the twentieth century, the Guatemalan state slaughtered more than two hundred thousand of its citizens. In the wake of this violence, a vibrant pan-Mayan movement has emerged, one that is challenging Ladino (non-indigenous) notions of citizenship and national identity. In The Blood of Guatemala Greg Grandin locates the origins of this ethnic resurgence within the social processes of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century state formation rather than in the ruins of the national project of recent decades. Focusing on Mayan elites in the community of Quetzaltenango, Grandin shows how their efforts to maintain authority over the indigenous population and secure political power in relation to non-Indians played a crucial role in the formation of the Guatemalan nation. To explore the close connection between nationalism, state power, ethnic identity, and political violence, Grandin draws on sources as diverse as photographs, public rituals, oral testimony, literature, and a collection of previously untapped documents written during the nineteenth century. He explains how the cultural anxiety brought about by Guatemala’s transition to coffee capitalism during this period led Mayan patriarchs to develop understandings of race and nation that were contrary to Ladino notions of assimilation and progress. This alternative national vision, however, could not take hold in a country plagued by class and ethnic divisions. In the years prior to the 1954 coup, class conflict became impossible to contain as the elites violently opposed land claims made by indigenous peasants. This “history of power” reconsiders the way scholars understand the history of Guatemala and will be relevant to those studying nation building and indigenous communities across Latin America.

Forests are alive, filled with rich, biologically complex life forms and the interrelationships of multiple species and materials. Vulnerable to a host of changing conditions in this global era, forests are in peril as never before. New markets in carbon and environmental services attract speculators. In the name of conservation, such speculators attempt to undermine local land control in these desirable areas. Moral Ecology of a Forest provides an ethnographic account of conservation politics, particularly the conflict between Western conservation and Mayan ontological ecology. The difficult interactions of the Maya of central Quintana Roo, Mexico, for example, or the Mayan communities of the Sain Ka’an Biosphere, demonstrate the clashing interests with Western biodiversity conservation initiatives. The conflicts within the forest of Quintana Roo represent the outcome of nature in this global era, where the forces of land grabbing, conservation promotion and organizations, and capitalism vie for control of forests and land. Forests pose living questions. In addition to the ever-thrilling biology of interdependent species, forests raise questions in the sphere of political economy, and thus raise cultural and moral questions. The economic aspects focus on the power dynamics and ideological perspectives over who controls, uses, exploits, or preserves those life forms and landscapes. The cultural and moral issues focus on the symbolic meanings, forms of knowledge, and obligations that people of different backgrounds, ethnicities, and classes have constructed in relation to their lands. The Maya Forest of Quintana Roo is a historically disputed place in which these three questions come together.