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This address provides a conceptual heuristic of "regions of refuge" as a means of understanding the complex and dynamic processes responsible for the great growth and emergence of Mexican-origin populations in the United States. Such processes are transnational, national, and regional, but at their center are economic issues of production and labor that have their genesis in the 19th century and will be even more important in the next century. By 2100, the Mexican-origin population will make up slightly less than a third of the entire U.S. population and will face issues of increasing economic inequality, steep social stratification, and modest educational attainment. The multiple methodological approaches of applied anthropology are crucial to the solution of what I have termed the "distribution of sadness" that accompanies such growth and issues.
Key words: regions of refuge, political ecology, distribution of sadness, colonias, Mexican-origin population
Permit me first to thank the Society for Applied Anthropology for awarding me the 2003 Bronislaw Malinowski Award. This is the apogee of my career in anthropology, as well as the highlight of whatever personal accomplishments I may have earned in my chosen profession. Two things are absolutely certain: first, there are many of you sitting in this audience fully deserving of the award, and, with your permission, I would like to accept the award not just for myself but for you who have devoted yourselves for so long to bettering the human condition. Second, whatever modest accomplishments I may enjoy, these would not have been possible if not for the many colleagues, especially at Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology of the University of Arizona, with whom I have been honored to work and from whom I have learned so much. I thank you humbly. Last, I would like to dedicate this work to my wife, Maria Luz Cruz Torres, an anthropologist on her own right, who has shown me much about the intricacies of political ecology and who has affectionately supported me in my sometimes nutty ideas. To our Nayely Luz, and to the rest of my beautiful children, of whom I am so proud, their generations will have to help resolve many of the issues I raise here.
Exactly 30 years ago, Gonzalo Aguirre Beltran, one of the...