The church bell in San Andrés Solaga rings loudly as the clock strikes six — there’s been a death in the community and it’s time for a pueblo-wide mass. Led by the town’s symphonic band, the procession of men carrying the body of a former Solagueño makes its way down the inclined, freshly paved street. The older men have to take turns carrying the coffin, it’s a long road and their backs are starting to hurt.
The crowd is filled with abuelitas, who hold rosaries and flowers in their hands and pray in Zapotec and Spanish. They haven’t seen the deceased woman in years. She long ago left the village behind for Mexico City, but she was still a paisana.
In the crowd of mourners stands Nereo Hernandez, sporting a green button-up shirt and Levi’s jeans. He’s not a friend of the woman who died, but he knows nearly all the families in town. As a true Solagueño, he knows attending funerals when he’s in town is a must.
Like the woman who died far from her pueblo, Hernandez left the community years before, only returning once or twice a year to visit his family. Instead of Mexico City, he moved to Los Angeles.
What unites Hernandez’s pueblo — whose branches have spread as far as New York and as close as Oaxaca City, a grueling three-hour windy drive away — are its roots here in the mountains of Oaxaca’s Sierra Norte. Although many, like Hernandez, have left to find a stable living and greater opportunities, San Andrés Solaga continues to be their home.
The stories of migration from Solaga are similar to those of other pueblos across Mexico — many of its young men and women left in the 1980s and 1990s, in search of a better life. Now, those who remain are the few adults who refused to leave and the older people who were left behind.
The quality of life for some Solagueños has definitely improved as families outside of the town send money back — the streets are paved, some houses are renovated — but as the town’s population continues to dwindle, some wonder how long towns like this can continue to sustain themselves.
Hernandez is one of the town’s success stories.
“When my paisanos started to leave, without thinking, I said, ‘Let me go with you guys,’” he recalls. “The plan was to go two or three years and return, but that didn’t happen. We’re still there working.”
Many Mexicans in the United States share a similar story — they leave with the intent of returning home. But that usually doesn’t happen, says Jody Vallejo, associate director of USC’s Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration.
“Most people who come for work do not intend to settle permanently,” Vallejo explained. “The goal is not to settle permanently but to be able to accumulate enough money to stabilize a family or community and to eventually return home.”
Hernandez has lived in South LA for more than 30 years. With the money he sent back, he was able to build a house in Solaga for his viejita and for his father, who died a few years back. He looks away when talking about him. His daughters, who were born in the United States, would come to Solaga for the annual fiestas patronales honoring the saint their town is named after.
Sergio García is one of those ancianitos who were left behind. He owns a small comedor with his wife, Doña Juquilita, in Solaga, where construction workers and town visitors trickle in throughout the day. His wife’s specialty is the morning staple salsa de huevo. The two miss thier daughter here in Solaga: their daughter went to the States for “a short trip” in the 1990s that became a permanent one. She continues to live there today.
“That’s what I don’t like about migration,” he says, as tears well up in his eyes. “The young people leave. The ones that leave, don’t come back.”
“As a father, I want to see my children, but seeing things as they are, our children can decide what to do with their lives,” he adds. “If she decides to stay over there, that’s her decision. I can’t force her to return.”
García says he misses his daughter but understands why she left — with the money she’s making in the U.S. she’s able to support her family in the U.S.
Rafael García’s small business sits on the small windy road that leads to the town’s central basketball court. García lived in Los Angeles in the late 1990s but decided to return home after his mother became ill a decade ago.
During his time in the United States, he was able to raise enough money to build a home for himself and for his ailing mother. Building homes for family members back home and with the hope of one day returning is a common thread among the many migration stories.
“That’s the priority,” he says. “In a week, I’d make $300 or $400. I’d put aside $50 or $100 and save some dinerito.”
García came back to live in the home he built and started a business. However, many of the cement, two-story, recently built homes remain empty as their migrant owners continue to live in the United States.
“How many empty houses do you see? Many. So many,” says Sergio García. “Some haven’t been opened in 10 years.”
How many empty houses do you see? Many. So many. Some haven’t been opened in 10 years.
Sergio García
While those who built the town’s best homes have yet to return, it’s a different time for people who consider leaving now.
Crossing to el gabacho as Hernandez did in the early 1980s is much harder. Now, people hesitate to leave — and those who do, instead choose to migrate within Mexico.
Vallejo says undocumented migration from Mexico into the United States has reached “net zero,” meaning that more people are leaving the U.S. than coming in — and the trend started well before the Trump administration.
“Mexico’s society is changing, it’s an aging population. Birth rates are very low so there are less people. There are fewer cohorts that would be in their prime working ages that would move,” Vallejo explained. “More recently, some people have said that the extremely punitive and discriminatory context in the U.S. directed at Mexican Americans has also made people think twice about coming to the U.S.”
The high level of migration out of Mexico was largely prompted by the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, explains Vallejo, which “decimated many of Mexico’s agricultural communities.”
In 1990, approximately 2 million undocumented Mexican immigrants resided in the U.S. according to data from the Pew Research Center. By the end of that decade, that number would more than double.
Hernandez left San Andrés Solaga before NAFTA, when migration out of these small, indigenous communities was just starting to increase.
He was one of the first to leave — and soon after, more followed.
“I left so I could help my family live a bit better. That’s what the U.S. has helped us with,” he says, adding that he only finished middle school in Solaga. “Thanks to my work and that dollars are worth more than pesos, we can send some money here and help them out.”
Things went well for him in Los Angeles. He helped other Solagueños get stable jobs in the dry cleaning business. Everyone in Solaga knew someone who could hook them up with a job if they decided to join them.
“The majority of paisanos who live in the U.S. work with the iron in the dry cleaners,” says Rafael García, who worked in the business himself while he lived in Los Angeles.
I left so I could help my family live a bit better. That’s what the U.S. has helped us with.
Nereo Hernandez
Everyone in Solaga has at least one family member who has migrated and who has spent their time working “con la plancha.”
Vallejo explains that this phenomenon is common as people begin to build social capital and connections in foreign places.
“Each time somebody moves from one place to another, it makes it more likely that somebody from that particular town or city will move because of the information that flows across borders,” Vallejo says.
Hernandez slowly but surely made Los Angeles his home. Each month, he’d send back as much as he could. He lived off a meager hourly wage of less than $5, eating humble meals to save for a new house for his mother and father, who were growing older back home.
Hernandez was one of the two million undocumented immigrants who benefited from the Reagan-era Immigration Reform and Control Act, which provided a pathway to citizenship for migrants. He became a citizen soon after.
Now he owns his own dry cleaning business in Los Angeles with his wife and two daughters. He’s been able to support his parents in Solaga and send his children to college in California.
“We run a business, through lots of effort, but thank God, we did it,” he says, with a grin.
Vallejo says Hernandez’s success is typical of those who attain citizenship.
“Citizenship allows people to attain better jobs, allows people to start businesses,” she says. “The children of people who obtained citizenship under IRCA have higher educational attainment compared to those who were unable to. Citizenship for the first generation has intergenerational effects.”
Hernandez’s success affects more people than his own family.
He also partners with other Solagueños in Los Angeles in what Vallejo calls “hometown organizations” which exist in cities with many migrants from one town. San Andrés Solaga has such organizations in Oaxaca City, Mexico City and Los Angeles.
“It has been very common for people from particular towns to get together, have events and raise money for specific things that are needed in the town — infrastructure in particular,” Vallejo says. “All kinds of issues that migrants in the U.S. seek to solve in their hometowns.”
Through these organizations, Solaga has paved its streets, remodeled its church and even built a new office for the town’s president and its local government.
“We put our grain of sand to help in all of the work they’ve done,” says Hernandez.
Alejandro Gomez Miguel, the town’s president, adds that without migrant help none of these projects would have come to fruition. Specifically, the road changes have helped the aging community in the mountainous town.
The graveyard has also been updated with brick walls and renewed fencing. Carrying the casket of the Mexico City paisana, the funeral procession entered through large metal gates fixed not long ago.
“There were many trails that would get lots of mud and a lot of the older people would slip and fall,” says Gomez. “But with the help of the migrants, we were able to work on that this year.”
As the band waited outside, the family of the deceased woman said their final goodbyes. Hernandez stood in silence and watched from afar.
It was another scene that reminded townspeople the next time they see their beloved family members who left San Andres Solaga may be in a casket.