The challenge

In the 1980's, immigration to the United States from the southeastern Mexican state of Oaxaca grew dramatically, filling the bottom rungs of the California labor market and forming what sociologists call binational communities. Laborers worked and supported each other in the United States, but remained actively engaged with their families as well as the cultural and civic life of their home villages. Now, approximately 80,000 indigenous people from Mexico reside in California and their main occupation is farm work. Earning among the lowest wages, many live in substandard housing and dangerous conditions. They come from the Southern Mexican states of Oaxaca, Guerrero and Puebla, and belong to such indigenous groups as the Mixteco, Zapoteco, Triqui, Chatino, Chinanteco and Mixe. In Oaxaca alone, 16 different languages are spoken and many migrants are monolingual. When they arrive in the United States, their inability to communicate – even among their own cultures – limits their access to jobs, housing, medical services and fair trials. In 1990, a Triqui man was held for two years in an Oregon mental hospital; local authorities mistook his native language for unintelligible raving. Many migrants are unaware of their basic rights. In 1991 at Somis Ranch in California’s Ventura County, more than 300 indigenous people from Oaxaca worked under conditions in which they were confined around the clock. As the Associated Press reported in 1995, “Workers said they worked for one dollar an hour, from 3:30 a.m. to 8 p.m., leaving them too tired to eat or escape. They had journeyed across the border, one said, into 'the mouth of the wolf.'”


Seeds of commitment

Along Rufino Domínguez’ long road, he has worked as a community organizer and attended junior college level courses in his home village of Juxtlahuaca, Oaxaca, worked as an immigrant farm worker and community organizer in the northern Mexico states of Sinaloa and Baja and in central California, and now works full time as a community organizer in both countries. “I am driven by the indignation I feel about the discrimination and poverty suffered by indigenous people everywhere,” he says. “I still recall my childhood and the teachings of the Catholic Marist priests who ran the boarding school I attended in Oaxaca. The priests taught me that we could not be passive spectators waiting for miracles or someone else to resolve our problems. We must be active participants seeking for solutions.”

His inspiration also comes from participating in mobilizations against local landlords in San Miguel Cuevas, Oaxaca. After his arrival in the United States, he noticed that indigenous Oaxacan migrants faced double racism: “First, from our own compatriots, the Mestizo-Mexicans, who refer to us with derogatory expressions such as ‘oaxaquitas, oaxacos, indios’; and second, from the Anglo-Americans who discriminate against us due to our appearance and to our cultural differences.” He also noted the exploitation by farmers and labor contractors, who abused the migrants’ lack of knowledge about U.S. laws and language. “Therefore, I realized that we needed to organize ourselves to defend our dignity and the rights that belong to us as human beings.”


Accomplishments

Soon after Domínguez began to work in U.S. fields in 1985, he organized his fellow immigrants from his hometown into their own community organization. With support from the Lutheran Church, they opened their first office in 1988. His work with the farm worker movement convinced him that Mexican indigenous people needed their own strong voice as well. The Oaxaca Binational Indigenous Coalition became a reality in 1991. It involves several thousand families in California, mainly in the five counties of the Central Valley, as well as in Santa Maria, Los Angeles and northern San Diego County. The Coalition is also active in northern Mexico and Oaxaca.

The organization’s Mexican and U.S. branches operate with relative autonomy, though the two branches also carry out coordinated binational human rights campaigns. The Coalition also supports two health projects: one provides health education for indigenous women and young girls; the other encourages indigenous families to take advantage of their eligibility for Medi-Cal insurance coverage. Recognizing that culture sustains community cohesion, Domínguez edits the bulletin El Tequio. He also developed the Coalition’s web site and hosts his own live half-hour TV show, Indigenous Awakening, which broadcasts to five counties of central California.

Domínguez led, until July 2001, the California Rural Legal Assistance (C.R.L.A.) organization’s first indigenous farm worker outreach program. He created a project that provided professional training for 16 community interpreters in indigenous languages. The project has since been reproduced in other parts of the U. S.. “Most recently, Rufino led a breakthrough victory on a dramatic environmental justice issue,” according to Jonathan A. Fox, chair of Latin American and Latino Studies, University of Santa Cruz. “Beginning in 1990, three dozen Mixteco families settled in a trailer park right next to a highly toxic dump. Because the nearby residents could neither speak Spanish nor read, previous outreach efforts to educate and move them had failed. With legal support from C.R.L.A., Rufino's Mixteco-language outreach and organizing, and three years of negotiating with various companies and government agencies, the Oaxaca Binational Indigenous Coalition achieved a $5 million alternative housing solution for the entire community.”


How he leads

Domínguez believes that most problems experienced by indigenous people from Mexico are the result of isolation; therefore his central strategy is to create connections with an emphasis on systemic, sustainable approaches. His goal of uniting Oaxacans of different ethnic backgrounds was partially achieved when the Mixteco, Zapoteco, Chatino and Triqui unified into one organization: the Oaxaca Binational Indigenous Coalition. Community members attend Coalition organized activities -- educational workshops, health fairs, sports contests and cultural events; some become part of the structure of the organization as regional coordinators or as members of a local committee. The Coalition’s strategy is to train the trainers. “We try to reproduce the traditions of participatory decision-making and accountable leadership that have characterized the Oaxacan indigenous communities,” he says.

His work with C.R.L.A. and the Oaxaca Binational Indigenous Coalition reaches well beyond his Oaxacan central focus. For example, he participates in a Medi-Cal promotion in partnership with 10 other community-based organizations. The program serves the general Fresno county population with special emphasis on Hmong, Latin Americans and African Americans. Also, through the Immigrant Women Weaving Cultures project, under the coordination of Pan Valley Institute of the American Friends Service Committee, he helped bring together Hmong and Mixteco women to share their respective cultures, identify common problems faced as immigrants -- and explore ways to tackle them.


The future

Domínguez’s goal is to establish a growing and self-sustaining network of organizations helping indigenous migrants, allied with other ethnic minorities. “We educate migrants to become knowledgeable leaders within their communities so that they are able to organize and train more people to learn how to defend their rights.”


More about Rufino Domínguez

“He inspires others more than any other Mexican immigrant leader I know of. For example, as Professor Jesús Martínez of California State University, Fresno, mentioned to me not long ago, having recently seen Rufino's work up close: ‘He's going for saint!’ At the same time, Rufino remains largely unrecognized, like so many immigrant leaders.”
– Jonathan A. Fox, professor and chair of Latin American and Latino Studies, University of Santa
Cruz, who is conducting a long term research Project on Mexican immigrant civic associations in
the United States.