Indigenous Migration in Mexico and Central America Interethnic Relations and Identity Transformations Introduction

Laura Velasco Ortiz and Dolores Paris Pombo dedicates the special issue of Latin American Perspectives, May 2014, to Michael Kearney for his contribution to the study of indigenous migration in Latin America. The multiethnic and multiracial component of Latin American migration is a consequence of the vitality of the continent's indigenous and Afro-American peoples. Latin American indigenous migration is reflected in the increase in size of the Indian Hispanic American population in the United States, which in 2000 was 407,073 and by 2010 had increased to 685,150. The current scenario of indigenous migration is characterized by the deterioration of the living conditions of the campesinos, workers, and low-income residents of the Latin American continent. The structural context of indigenous migration includes the destruction and appropriation of natural resources in indigenous territory. The spatial logic of mobility responds to a cultural regionalization that goes beyond regionalizations produced by nation-states' political administration.