Indigenous Migrations to Baja California Sur: Regional Economic Enclaves and Ethnic Apartheid

• Author: Tamar Diana Wilson
• Published date: 01 November 2020
• Date: 01 November 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X20952330
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

146 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

Thomson, Sinclair

2002 We Alone Will Rule: Native Andean Politics in the Age of Insurgency. Madison: University of

Wisconsin Press.

Indigenous Migrations to Baja California Sur

Regional Economic Enclaves and Ethnic Apartheid

by

Tamar Diana Wilson

Laura Velasco Ortiz and Carlos Hernández Campos Migración, trabajo y asentamiento

en enclaves globales: Indígenas en Baja California Sur. Tijuana and Mexico City: El Colegio de

la Frontera Norte/Comisión Nacional para el Desarrollo de Pueblos Indígenas, 2018.

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X20952330

Velasco and Hernández present the reader with a comprehensive in-depth analysis

and a theoretically insightful—if at times underdeveloped—consideration of indigenous

migration to Baja California Sur, home to tourism and agricultural exportation. The book

also contains 40 black-and-white and 40 color illustrations. Based on extensive fieldwork

and interviews, the study also relies on an exhaustive summary of statistics concerning

the indigenous population of the state based on data published by the Instituto Nacional

de Estadística y Geografía, the Colegio de la Frontera Norte, and the Comisión Nacional

para el Desarrollo de los Pueblos Indígenas and other sources. For example, they show

that indigenous migrants—defined as those who speak an indigenous language or con-

sider themselves indigenous without speaking an indigenous language—to Baja

California Sur has increased from 4.9 percent of all migrants to the state in 1990 to 22.6

percent in 2015. Among the other patterns revealed are that there are increasing numbers

who identify themselves as indigenous but do not speak an indigenous language; that

there has been a diversification of source states from primarily Oaxaca and Guerrero to

Veracruz, Puebla, and Chiapas; that because of the increasing importance of agricultural-

export regions, there has in some cases been a shift from family migration to individual

male migration; and that although temporary and circular migration continues, many

families have settled in the most marginalized colonias (neighborhoods) of urban centers

or continue to be trapped in agricultural labor camps.

Velasco and Hernández advance the idea of regional economic enclaves marked by

ethnicization/racialization that is linked to intensive labor exploitation. Moving beyond

the dependentista idea of economic enclaves formed by international interests in the

exploitation of agricultural and mineral resources, they suggest that such enclaves,

under the forces of neoliberalism and globalization, may be fostered by national and

local as well as international capital. They hold that these regional economic enclaves

contain natural and human resources that provide a link between the global and the

local. Unfortunately, the theoretical treatment of this link is relegated to a few pages.

Velasco and Hernández are concerned with two specific types of regional economic

enclaves: touristic and agricultural. The tourist enclave on which they focus is the

municipality of Los Cabos, encompassing San José del Cabo and Cabo San Lucas,

where 45.6 percent of the indigenous population is concentrated. Indigenous families

Tamar Diana Wilson is the author of Economic Life of Mexican Beach Vendors (2012) and has lived in

Cabo San Lucas since 1994.