Mexican migration has been the subject of many analyses concerned
with exploring its political and economic dimensions. These studies
have yielded key data on the process of mass migration and its
implications at a societal level, yet they have seldom explored
its implications at a personal level. To understand the emotional
reality of migration, it is necessary to direct our attention to
the viewpoints of the migrants themselves. In this section we have
included a few stories of migration as told by Mexican migrants,
and a collection of Retablos, votive paintings offered to a Saint
or the Virgin as tokens of thanks.
Retablos and Oral histories alike reveal the degree to which
U.S. migration has become a core part of the collective experience
of the Mexican people. Working in the United States is now an institutionalized
feature of the nation's culture and society. The words and images
presented in this section are integral to our understanding of
migration because they depict a side usually not told in statistical
reports, they evidence the hopes and fears, the thoughts, lives
and experiences of those who venture north of the border, the migrants
themselves.
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