This book examines the settlement process of undocumented migrant workers through an ethnographic study of a Houston (Texas) community of Mayas from a township in Totonicapan, Guatemala. The community is traced from its genesis in 1978, when a few men left the township in search of economic opportunity, to the complex effects of the 1986…

In December 1996, a peace accord ended 30 years of civil war in Guatemala, during which an estimated 200,000 people were killed and over 1 million were displaced. Most of the war's victims have been indigenous (Maya) Guatemalans--who make up about 65 percent of the population--and other supporters of economic and political reforms. In this book,…