Democracy from Below

La Pulla Mixteca, No. 10, Vol. 1, November 1990, The Frente Indígena de Organizaciones Binacionales Newspaper Archives

An asamblea in the heart of the Triqui Baja Region, Oaxaca, 1980s, Photo Courtesy of Francisco López Bárcenas

In his current book project, Democracy from Below: The Communal Worlds Indigenous Migrants Created, Dr. Ramirez-Lopez follows the lives of Indigenous people from southern Mexico who were among the first significant generation to labor in the US and Mexican Pacific Coast during the 1980s and early 1990s. Drawing on oral histories, traditional and community archives, government records and data, and personal collections in Mexico and the United States, Dr. Ramirez-Lopez highlights the emergence of a grassroots movement centered on Indigenous rights, autonomy, and multi-ethnic and multi-racial solidarity across borders to confront the neoliberal economic changes of the time.

Democracy from Below builds on Dr. Ramirez-Lopez’s dissertation, which received the 2022 W. Turrentine Jackson Dissertation Award from the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association (AHA), the 2022 Latinx Studies Section Dissertation Award from the Latin American Studies Association (LASA), and an honorable mention for the 2022 LASA/Oxfam America Martin Dissertation Award.

Democracy from Below examines the ways Indigenous migrant people’s expressions of their pueblo governance like tequio and asambleas were crucial to build a movement that could address their rights as Native people and find solutions to the problems posed by migration. The book is attentive to the strategies, ideologies, and actions of some of the most visible, political, and cultural efforts by Oaxacan migrants. In doing so, Democracy from Below places Indigenous migrants from southern Mexico and their protracted struggle in the late twentieth century as part of Native American, Chicanx/Latinx, and U.S., and Mexican histories. An early version of a book chapter is available as, “Our Dark Hands and Sore Backs: The Comité Cívico Popular Mixteco and the New Grassroots Activism by Indigenous Mexican Migrants,” Journal of American Ethnic History 43, no. 2 (2024): 5-33.