International migration and culture change in Guatemala's Maya Occidente and Ladino Oriente

International migration changes and reorganizes the rhythms of people's everyday lives. This study explores how transnational migration, especially return migration and remittances (social and economic), affects ethnicity and gender in culturally and regionally distinct sending communities in Guatemala. Through a cross-regional and cross-cultural approach, this ethnography compares the tangible and intangible consequences in a Ladino town in the Oriente (East) and a Mayan K'iche' town in the Occidente (West). This emphasis provides a balanced and deeper understanding of the ethnic and geographic migration-related outcomes in Guatemala, a place long recognized for its ethnically dichotomous character.;This ethnography focuses on Ladino and Mayan migrants who return home from their northward ventures to the United States and how they impact local life. Migrants and non-migrants blend and incorporate ideas, practices, and activities from both origin and destination communities. Though both Ladino and Mayan communities forge solid transnational connections, the effects of these connections vary. Mayans, for example, use economic remittances to strengthen indigenous ethnicity through individual and group sponsorship of the annual patron saints celebration. Such community-building practices appear less pronounced among Ladinos.;Despite a growth in female-headed households, more women in the labor force, and increasing transnational migration, I argue that gender relations in Guatemala are not changing rapidly. In both communities, migration reinforces patriarchy because migra dollars provide additional power to men. Moreover, small changes in gender relations that take place when male migrants return to Guatemala evaporate in the home context where "traditional" gender roles predominate. Gendered contrasts are highlighted that set both towns apart, particularly in how each locality embraces and responds to domestic violence. Migration is instrumental in stimulating change in Ladina women's lives and often becomes an escape valve to the North. Conversely, for Mayan women the mechanism for change is the intense flood of NGO's sanctioning women's rights and pan-Mayan ethnic organizing. Through ethnographic examples this study examines how global and transnational processes transform livelihoods and places in the developing world. The significance here is that two distinct groups illustrate how local processes and places articulate with broader global and transnational processes.