UC Riverside

My dissertation focuses on multi-racial, Maya and ladino, labor migrations in Southern California’s Inland Empire. This project uses quantitative and qualitative methods to provide a reliable data set and analysis for a population demographically invisiblized by multiple factors: fear of law enforcement agencies, reluctance to participate in state demographic and census surveys due to past and ongoing traumas with state repression, small size within Latina/o/x and indigenous communities in the region, in-group bigotries and racialized segmentation within minoritized communities; and general U.S. white supremacy. Accordingly, I developed an original survey that captures the demographic profile of approximately 160 Guatemalan migrants across the Los Angeles metropolitan region including Riverside and San Bernardino. I also conducted 30 structured and semi-structured interviews with multiple Maya and ladino migrants within the Guatemalan diaspora in the Los Angeles area. Moreover, I immersed myself in over three years of participant observation that involved solidarity and service. This project is shaped by Ethnic Studies methodologies such as accompaniment, which Barbara Tomilson and George Lipsitz (2013) define as a methodological and philosophical approach to research built on trust, collaboration, and solidarity through service to the community groups, such as MayaVisión and Tejiendocentroamérica, that have informed the overall the research project. I also draw upon historical materialist and critical race studies to make sense of the forces shaping indigenous and ladino displacement from Guatemala over time. I employ Marxist Latin American Dependency Theory and Racial Capitalism to argue how the complex forces of contemporary capitalism are displacing multi-racial and multi-ethnic migrants across Guatemala, and how they are being absorbed into low wage “Latino” segmented labor markets in Sothern California’s Inland Empire. Key Words: Inland Empire, Guatemalan Migration, Racial Capitalism, Marxist Latin American Dependency Theory, Central American Studies, Latinx Studies, Subaltern Latinx Politics, Latino Labor Markets, Accompaniment