Event

In the late twentieth century, the significant migration of Indigenous people from Oaxaca, Mexico, began to transform the historically Mexican and Latina/o communities in California. Amid a period of heightened anti-immigrant racism and increased border militarization, Oaxacan people drew on their Native practices of providing service to their pueblos (communities of origin) and engaged in activism across the places in which they labored and lived. In turn, this began the emergence and evolution of the Indigenous migrant social movement through grassroots and transnational efforts to mobilize in defense of their communities of origin amid multiple settler nation-states. This talk shows how the Indigenous migrant movement began in places like San Diego, California, and how it developed multiracial and coalitional politics that drew upon their Native self-governance and cultural traditions yet became transformed under new circumstances.

Dr. Jorge Ramirez-Lopez (he/him) is a UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the American Indian Studies Center at UCLA. Dr. Ramirez-Lopez received his Ph.D. in US history from the University of California, San Diego, in 2021. He writes about transnational social movements, race and Indigeneity, migration, and labor between the United States and Mexico. His work has been published in Aztlán, Kalfou, The National Review of Black Politics, Radical History Review, and a forthcoming article in The Journal of American Ethnic History. Finally, He is a member of the board of directors for the Binational Center for the Development of Oaxacan Indigenous Communities (CBDIO) and an advisor for the Indigenous Front of Binational Organizations (FIOB) in California.