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In Spanish-speaking Latin America, people with a mixed (Indigenous and European) ethnic and cultural identity are considered “mestizo” people. In Latin America as well as the United States, mestizo people generally have more social privilege and economic opportunities than Indigenous people (including Mixtec and Triqui people).
Mestizo Quotes in Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies
The Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies quotes below are all either spoken by Mestizo or refer to Mestizo. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 3
Quotes
The physical dirt from the labor of the indigenous pickers had become symbolically linked with their character, and at the same time the limited possibility of relationships between Shelly and the indigenous workers because of the language barriers had become symbolically projected as assumed character flaws onto the indigenous pickers themselves. In addition to bringing into relief the "de facto apartheid" on the farm, the profiles of the supervisors exemplify the range of responses to ethnic and class difference within an exploitative system.
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The ethnic-labor hierarchy seen here—white and Asian American U.S. citizen, Latino U.S. citizen or resident, undocumented mestizo Mexican, undocumented indigenous Mexican—is common in much of North American farming. […] Yet this is only a small piece of the global hierarchy. The continuum of structural vulnerability can be understood as a zoom lens, moving through many such hierarchies. When the continuum is seen from farthest away, it becomes clear that the local family farm owners are relatively low on the global corporate agribusiness hierarchy. When looked at more closely, we see the hierarchy on this particular farm. addition, perceptions of ethnicity change as the zoom lens is moved in and out. As mentioned above, many of the farm executives (as well as area residents) considered all migrant farmworkers "Mexican," whereas those in closer contact with the farmworkers came to distinguish between "regular Mexicans" and "Oaxacans," and those working in the fields themselves often differentiated among mestizo, Triqui, and Mixtec people.
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Mestizo Term Timeline in Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies
The timeline below shows where the term Mestizo appears in Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 2: “We Are Field Workers”: Embodied Anthropology of Migration
...States. Many of their families have suffered generations of violence and displacement by Spanish, American, mestizo, and other Indigenous groups. Their stories are important for many reasons, including the fact that...
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Chapter 3: Segregation on the Farm: Ethnic Hierarchies at Work
...woman who supervises the crews of white teenagers. Shelly tells Holmes that she prefers “traditional [mestizo] Mexicans” to Oaxacans, whom she considers filthy, disrespectful, lazy, and not family oriented. Holmes points...
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...are the field workers, who make minimum wage and are paid hourly. They are mostly mestizos who do farm tasks besides fruit-picking, like driving tractors and spraying pesticides. The raspberry pickers,...
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...they miss the daily minimum weight twice, they lose their jobs. A few Mixtec and mestizo workers pick apples. But the 350–400 strawberry and blueberry pickers are nearly all Triqui people...
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...are at the top and undocumented Indigenous people at the bottom. Latinx Americans and Mexican mestizos are in the middle. Among Indigenous people, Mixtecs are above Triquis, who are seen as...
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Chapter 4: “How the Poor Suffer”: Embodying the Violence Continuum
...are overwhelmingly unlikely to have insurance. These effects are generally worse for indigenous workers than mestizo ones.
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Chapter 5: “Doctors Don’t Know Anything”: The Clinical Gaze in Migrant Health
...one doctor alternate days at the government clinic, but they don’t speak Triqui. While nearby mestizo cities have better healthcare, the Oaxaca state government prevents other Triqui towns from getting clinics....
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...supply water to the clinic, which is usually closed, even during its official hours. Its mestizo staff misunderstands and looks down on the local Triqui people’s culture. For instance, they criticize...
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...In fact, this nurse classifies Triqui children as malnourished based on an index developed for mestizo children in Mexico City. She openly tells Holmes that she wants to leave San Miguel,...
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...context. As a result, just like the doctors Triqui migrants visit in the U.S., these mestizo doctors blame patients for their illnesses, perpetuate racist stereotypes, and provide inadequate and sometimes outright...
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Chapter 6: “Because They’re Lower to the Ground”: Naturalizing Social Suffering
...Latinx people as “Mexican,” while those in the agriculture industry distinguish between Latinx U.S. citizens, mestizos, and Indigenous Oaxacans (including Mixtecs and Triquis).
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...the word “Mexican” to disparage those they see as other, Latinx U.S. citizens and Mexican mestizos use the word to define themselves in opposition to Indigenous people from Oaxaca. Regardless, people...
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...Indigenous Mexicans poor, but this was really the result of U.S.-led policies like NAFTA. Similarly, mestizo Mexicans blame Triqui people for their poverty—for example, one nun says that Triqui people don’t...
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