Everardo Garduño

Applied Anthropology in the Mexico-United States Borderlands: Comparative Perspectives on Transborder Process

This issue of Human Organization is the result of the transborder conference Cultura y Comunidad held in Ensenada, Mexico (2014). Stemming from the “world-wide” incentive and trajectory of the SfAA, and the growing interest in “Applied Anthropology” in Mexico, Mexican and United States institutions joined with the SfAA in a collaborative conference to explore transborder themes affecting individuals and communities, social process, and social justice from the perspectives of transborder anthropologies. Applied vs. Activist anthropology and differences in Mexican and United States anthropology are explored. The conference proposed acknowledging the regional, transnational/transborder—the Southwest North America and Northern Mexico as a geographic and fluid human entity. Gender, indigeneity, education, health and cancer treatment, monetary exchange, violence, and ethnic representation are discussed from both Mexican and United States transborder perspectives. A principal goal is to engage “world anthropolog...

Making the Invisible Visible: The Yumans of the United States-Mexico Transborder Region

After the colonization and missionary period in the 18th century, the economic development propelled by Europeans and Americans in the 19th century, and the establishment of the new United States-Mexico border in 1848, the Yuman groups experienced a dramatic population diminishment and dispersion. This included integration into a cash economy and cattle culture and the fission of their traditional lineages into two different nationalities. The Yumans became “invisible” before the Indianist agencies of the government, as a stereotyped image of indigenous people. However, in recent years, the Yumans have reinvigorated their ethnic identity through transborder articulations. This article illustrates how a Yuman ethnogenesis is fueled by the transborder reencountering of fissioned Yuman lineages and the linkages between a growing ethnic self-reference and ethnicities of diverse origin. This article also shows how modern communication plays a central role in this process. Finally, making the invisible Yumans v...