Crisis-management: Tzeltal-Maya transnational migration and the Foucauldian apparatus

Abstract

This paper offers a Foucauldian analysis of Tzeltal-Maya transnational migration from Cañada Estrella, Ocosingo, Chiapas, to San Francisco, California, placing it within the context of North American neoliberalism. It asserts that Tzeltal-Maya migrants, through their creation of new transnational social relations, bring into articulation an informal neoliberal migration apparatus (a Foucauldian dispositif). This apparatus assembles and coordinates a variety of indigenous, ladino, and gringo strategies, techniques, tactics, and technologies for dealing with and harnessing the crises and opportunities presented by international capitalism. Such an apparatus functions in tandem and tension with neoliberal state apparatuses and produces a transnational neoliberal order in indigenous ejidos. Further, this paper demonstrates that this apparatus has allowed Tzeltal-Maya ejidos in the Lacandon Jungle greater degrees of autonomy from the Mexican municipal, state, and federal governments and the local rancher elite, while also making them increasingly interdependent with small businesses in the United States. © 2011 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.