Marcella Loprinzi Hardin Conducts Research in Mexico on Refugees in the 1980s
Thanks to the Georgetown Americas Institute student grant, Marcella Loprinzi Hardin was able to conduct three months of research in Chiapas, Mexico, where she conducted interviews and fieldwork on the dynamics between refugees and Mexican communities.
With Americas Institute funding Marcella Loprinzi Hardin was able to conduct three months of research in Chiapas, Mexico. She also spent one week in Mexico City, where she also conducted research. Over the three-month period in Chiapas, she conducted 7 interviews with informants in San Cristobal and Comitan. The information that she gained from these interviews also lead her to the discovery of an archival repository at UNACH where she found four previously conducted oral history interviews with residents of Nuevo San Juan Chamula, Nuevo Huixtan and Nuevo Matzam. These sources helped her understand the dynamics between refugees and Mexican communities that they lived and worked with, underscoring the mutually beneficial relationship that existed throughout the 1980s. Campesinos were able to offer safety from the military, housing and worker visas to Guatemalan refugees, who in turn provided desperately needed labor and brought in increased funding to the once “forgotten” region.
Over the summer she was also able to meet with several US historians who were passing through San Cristobal de las Casas on research trips, who also had connections at the local university UNAM-CIMSUR. In one of these meetings, it was explained to her how to access the secret police files in the Archivo General, which she had tried and failed to access previously. Therefore, in October she took a short trip back to Mexico City to look at this collection. It had key information about the Mexican government’s views on refugees and their suspicion about links to guerrillas in the refugee camps.