Yohualtetzauitl Amerika. Migración, masculinidad y adolescentes indígenas mexicanos
Yohualtetzauitl Amerika. Migration, Masculinity, and Mexican Indigenous Teenagers

Summary/Abstract: The aim of this paper is to present the migration experiences of Mexican indigenous teenagers who were repatriated from the United States, and, parallelly, to analyze the masculinity narratives underlying their experiences. With interviews carried out in a shelter for migrant children located on the northern border of Tamaulipas, at Mexico northeast, the stories of six teenagers from the Purépecha, Mixteca, Nahua and Zapoteca ethnicities are explored. Based on their stories it is possible to identify that in their home communities the prevailing cosmology and social organization are shaped by a gender structure, that their decision to emigrate was tempered by cultural pressures and desires, and, finally, that their trip to the border was marked by power relations established with mestizo men and women, such as coyotes and migrants in transit. The conclusion is that teenager migrants along their way have lived a form of ethnic vulnerability while interacting with mestizo people, but also they deployed ways of being a man according to their particular indigenous worldview.

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