Indigenous migrants grow in U.S. work force

SUMAS, Whatcom County — Catarina Lopez was born and raised in Guatemala and lived there for most of her 46 years, but she is not Latina, although many people think she is.

Lopez is Mayan, a descendant of the inhabitants that populated Central America and parts of Mexico before the Spanish colonized the region in the 1500s.

Her ancestry — like that of thousands of other indigenous Latin Americans who have migrated to United States — challenges and clouds the perception Americans have of the immigrants coming from south of the border.

Lopez is from a small village in the eastern highlands of Guatemala. She now lives a few yards from the Canadian border, a northernmost example of a relatively new migration.

The growing number of indigenous people — especially as farmworkers — has caught the attention of the federal government, which has made changes to the National Agricultural Workers Survey to get a better picture of the indigenous population here.

"They're indigenous, but they're all not from the same country," said Lourdes Villanueva, farmworker advocate for Florida-based Redlands Christian Migrant Association. "Each one of them is different. Each group comes from a different place."

Most indigenous workers come from southern Mexico, although groups from Guatemala and other countries have migrated as well. Many speak limited Spanish — some not at all. Various dialects and languages are spoken within the groups that have migrated north.

Between 10 and 30 percent of the farmworkers in California are estimated to be indigenous, according to a 2008 study by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

In Washington state, indigenous workers have settled in the agricultural areas of Skagit and Whatcom counties.

A bulk of Florida's indigenous work force labors in the central part of the state south of Tampa Bay.

Like many other immigrants, indigenous people began migrating north because of economic hardship or war in the last 15 to 20 years, said James Loucky, a professor of anthropology at Western Washington University.

Their arrival has changed the makeup of communities, but often that change is hard to understand.

Latin American indigenous are sometimes grouped with Latinos. Their last names and countries of origin lead people to think they're Latino, but they have a distinct history and background.

Under Department of Labor and U.S Census Bureau data, indigenous Latin Americans are grouped with Native Americans and Alaska Natives, making data about them hard to extract.

"Indigenous workers have other unique characteristics that make them a difficult population to serve. Survey data, however, underestimate the size of this population," a proposal from the U.S. Department of Labor, which administers the survey, said before the changes.

The survey's findings help steer more than $1 billion in federal money for farmworker health, education and other services.

An initial change to the survey that listed indigenous languages was made in 2005 after farmworker service providers expressed concerns that indigenous workers were being underestimated.

The new change is the addition of a question about the place of birth of parents, which aims at narrowing a respondent's origin. Most indigenous workers come from certain areas of Mexico, and results can be cross-checked with Mexican census data.

One of the reasons for the change was indigenous respondents often do not self-identify as indigenous because of their history of being discriminated in their home countries. Indigenous peoples in Latin America often are at the bottom of the social ladder. In the 1980s, between 200,000 and 250,000 indigenous people were killed in Guatemala in a civil war, Loucky said.

"They're trying to protect their self-esteem, trying to avoid similar kinds of denigration directed to their children," Loucky added.

An influx of indigenous workers has required adjustment from workers and farmers. Farmers have learned to negotiate with family or village leaders, while workers are learning Spanish to talk to field managers, said Bryan Little, Labor Affairs director at the California Farm Bureau.

"Because of their tribal roots, they tend to be family-oriented to a huge degree, and what winds up happening is that the farmers end up employing family groups," Little said. "The upshot of that is you wound up working with the same people one year to the next."

Back in Sumas, Lopez sat quietly in her family's living room as her husband, Isabel Mendoza, spoke for her.

"She's not afraid," Mendoza said. "She understands things."

This family speaks Aguacateco, a language used by only 18,000 people in Guatemala.

Like many indigenous people, the family traveled north to find work. In 1986, Mendoza was granted amnesty and was able to bring his sons, daughters and wife to the U.S. legally. Now, they own a house and work at local dairies.

But it's been a challenge, he said, adjusting to life in America, a country where people seemingly don't know who indigenous people are, or don't care.

"They tell us we're Mexican, anyways," Mendoza said.