LEARN NC

family in San Pablito, Mexico

Bridging Spanish language barriers in Southern schools

From the UNC School of Education

1.2 From rural Mexico to North Carolina

By Regina Cortina

Between 1995 and 2005, many new immigrant workers and their families arrived to North Carolina from Mexico. Three metropolitan areas in the state — Charlotte, Greensboro-Winston Salem, and Raleigh-Durham — became major gateways of immigration to the United States. With the great influx of immigrants in recent years, North Carolina became one the states with the fastest growing foreign-born population.

The increase in the Latino population in many states across the South has far exceeded the expected rates. Between 1990 and 2004, North Carolina saw its Latino population grow from 76,000 to nearly 600,000. From the school years 2000-2001 to 2004-2005, Latino students accounted for 57.3 percent of the total growth in the North Carolina public schools, accounting for a change in school enrollment of 45,148.1

For cities in the United States, most of their new immigrants from Mexico usually arrive from a specific Mexican city or state. Migration is based on social networks. People tell their family and friends that there is work in an area, and more people from the same town start arriving to the same community where people they know can get help in finding houses and finding employers.

In this section we are going to focus on the migration from two states in Mexico to North Carolina. The first is the State of Puebla, more specifically the Sierra Norte de Puebla, from villages devoted to coffee production. The second is migration from the neighboring State of Veracruz. These two examples are only a picture of what is occurring throughout the nation—looking at two specific areas provides a concrete example of the social networks that link Mexico to North Carolina.

From the Sierra Norte to Durham, North Carolina

The economic growth in Raleigh and Durham and the need for additional labor started the networks of migration from the State of Puebla in Mexico to Durham. This economic growth, especially the boom in the construction industry, has created many new jobs. People are coming from rural areas to work in urban areas, and this is a new pattern of migration. Traditional migration circuits brought many workers primarily during the warm months to harvest crops and work on farms. In that old pattern, the majority of the migrant workers moved on to other states following the harvest and returned to Mexico at the end of the yearly agricultural cycle.

Today, most families are arriving to urban areas to work not only in construction but in many other urban jobs such as grocery workers, kitchen, seamstresses, laundry, construction and other occupations. The types of jobs that Mexican workers find in urban areas are more stable. Mexican workers in North Carolina are no longer seasonal workers but permanent workers. Their change in employment from rural to urban, along with greater border security and visa restrictions since the 9/11 tragedy, have resulted in additional difficulty for workers in crossing the U.S-Mexico border. This new situation has encouraged families to become more rooted in the United States. This represents a significant change from the traditional circular migration where men came alone and often only for a few months. Now the men bring their families with them, since they do not want to leave their wives and children behind, and don’t want to break up nuclear family. As a result, there are a growing number of families with children born in Mexico as well as U.S.-born siblings, all going to school in Durham.

The Latino population in Durham Public Schools

Most of the families that are arriving are young. Their youthfulness explains the high fertility rates and the fact that many of their children are concentrated in the lower grades of the educational system. As of August 2006, 25 percent of the kindergarten enrollment in the Durham Public Schools is of Latin American and Mexican origin. Latino students represent 14 percent of the total enrollment in the district. It is fair to say that every classroom in Durham is now likely to have immigrant student or students who have immigrant parent. As a whole, 1 in 5 children in the United States’ classrooms are the children of immigrant parents and the majority of those children with immigrant parents are U.S. citizens themselves.

Migration from the State of Puebla

The migration of Poblanos, as residents of the State of Puebla are called, to the United States is mostly related to job opportunities. In many cases those who leave Mexico think of coming to the United States for a short period of time to save money to invest back home. During the time they are away, the money they periodically send home is primarily used for food, improvements to the family dwelling, medical expenses and education. But as a greater number of Poblanos move away from their communities of origin in the Mexican countryside, migration has had the unforeseen consequence of eroding the local labor force. The young and those with higher levels of education are the ones most likely to leave. Migration is also affecting the integration of the families, and it is exposing many of the workers to rising health risks.

In the specific case of Durham, Mexican immigrants are arriving from the Sierra de Puebla in the State of Puebla, primarily from indigenous communities from the municipalities of Pahuatlán, Huauchinango, Honey and Zacatlán. These are all traditional agricultural communities. An accelerated drop in the price of coffee in the international market, to levels that made it impossible for growers to get a return on the funds they had invested to grow the coffee, as well as the low price offered in the markets for other crops such as citrus and pepper, forced young men from these communities to go out and find jobs in other areas, first within the Mexican domestic market, then in North Carolina.

Mexican indigenous groups

Indigenous groups are identified as those that speak a language other than Spanish. The State of Puebla has one of the largest populations of non-Spanish speakers. Three main indigenous groups continue living on these area Nahuas, Otomíes and Totonacos. Nahuas are the most numerous of the three groups. Their language Nahuatl is a written language still taught in schools today. It was the language spoken by the Aztecs, the civilization that the Spanish conquerors found in the valley of Mexico when they arrived to the American continent. These traditional languages of the Americas are completely separate language-not a version of Spanish-emphasizing the complexity of bilingual schools in Mexico)

In the following sections, we will look at a craft tradition in one of the Otomí villages in the area, San Pablito.

moutains in the distance

Making papel amaté in San Pablito

San Pablito is like many other of the indigenous town surrounding Pahuatlán, the commercial and banking center of the area. It is a community that’s survival depends on the exploitation of natural resources in the surrounding mountains. These natural resources have created a craft industry that is household-based. In the specific case of San Pablito, most of the population of the town is devoted to the production of Papel Amaté. This is a kind of paper made out of the bark of jonoté, a tree native to this area. The bark of the tree is peeled, cooked and then pounded to make a beautiful paper used by artists and decorators. This craft has allowed many people to maintain a reasonable standard of living, but the unregulated exploitation of the jonoté forest is leading to its depletion, and there are not many additional opportunities for the young in these communities. To supplement their household income, many of the women of the town embroider traditional garments, as is shown in the picture below; the young women making the Papel Amaté has a traditional blouse.

girl in traditional dress making papel amaté

papel amaté

The lack of opportunities for the young within this traditional rural area causes many of them to look for opportunities outside the region. In previous generations, people from this area went to Mexico City to work as construction workers. Since the mid-1990s, their preferred destination is North Carolina. But now the closing of the U.S.-Mexican border has resulted in significant changes of the cyclical migration patterns of the past. Not only single young men but whole families are coming, and as noted above, the migration has changed from being temporary to being permanent.

a North Carolina license plate

As the young leave, those who remain are increasingly the elderly, and they become ever more dependent on the money sent back to them from their children.

Migration from Veracruz to North Carolina

Veracruz is the neighboring state to Puebla. It is on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Veracruz is not a state that has traditionally exported labor to work in the United States. In fact, it is a state with rich natural resources, a state with fertile soil where bananas, avocados, vanilla, coffee, grapefruits, oranges, and lemons are grown in great quantities. The northern part of the state, the area from which most people are leaving to come to North Carolina, is where the oil resources of Mexico are found. Oil exploration and massive refineries have created a significant middle class in the city of Poza Rica. In the surrounding areas to Papantlá, there are many cattle ranches, and well-to-do farmers living in the area.

Families from this area are coming from Veracruz mainly to North Carolina and Texas, invited by established communities of immigrants and by local business that recruit them from that region who are already present in both states. Without any doubt, one thing that propels residents of this region northward is the significant difference between wages in Mexico and the United States. In most cases, a worker can make as much in one hour in the United State as the daily wage in Mexico. The economic asymmetry between Mexico and the United States is a powerful motor fueling the migration.

Local authorities in the city of Papantlá are concerned that since the migration started in the mid-1990s, and has continued to grow, many more young people are leaving, and the more qualified workers are the ones who make the trip North. The authorities realize that soon they will need to import workers themselves while the local youth labor in the United States. For this reason, they have started program to create new economic opportunities.

Veracruz also has an indigenous population. But in contrast to Puebla the indigenous populations are not migrating yet. The ones that coming are living are rural residents that do not want to work in the fields any more. Veracruz was the place of residence of the Totonacos, a people who left a highly important religious center next to the City of Papantlá.

ruins of a pyramid

They also left a traditional religious ceremony still practiced today, known as the Voladores de Papantlá.

Voladores de Papantlá

The description of these two different states in Mexico, Puebla and Veracruz give you a glimpse of the highly heterogeneous population that is arriving to North Carolina. They do not only differ in their ethnicity and language spoken in the home but they come from completely different regions, some are coming from the mountains and other from the coast, their music, their food, and their way of speaking are all different.

Bring into your classroom the cultural knowledge that your Latino students bring from their communities of origin. Below are a few basic suggestions for how to understand the backgrounds of your students.

  • Make an attempt to get to know the student and learn more about where the family came from. Ask the parents if they might be able to demonstrate the types of handicrafts that are produced in their town of origin or explain their local music traditions.
  • Include elements from their region of origin in the curriculum that are familiar to your students and relevant to their experiences.
  • Visit the students’ homes during the school year to speak with their parents and learn more about their cultural heritage.
  • There are great variations in regional food in Mexico. Ask your students about the special dishes, breads or candies from their communities of origin. This is a way of incorporating something about their family traditions into the classroom.
  1. John D. Kasarda and James H. H. Johnson, Jr., The Economic Impact of the Hispanic Population on the State of North Carolina, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, January 2006. Table 7: Net change in total and Hispanic Enrollment in North Carolina Public Schools, 1985–2004, p. 17. [return]