their family members left behind, return migrants, and migrants whose final place of residence

has yet to be determined.

 Moreover, this dissertation exposes how the migrant experience is translated into both

material changes in local community development and more elusive transformations in gender

roles and ethnic relations. The entrance of the dollar into the local economy enables housing

improvements and support for children's secondary education. Transportation and

communication advances replace horses with off-road pick-up trucks, and communitarios (public

community phones) with cell phones. As a result of remittances, an alternative land reform is

taking place: properties are being redistributed from the wealthy Ladino families to the once

landless Maya.

 These tangible changes are directly related to the less noticeable transformations that are

taking place inside households and between the Mayan and Ladino communities. Women

struggle as temporary heads-of-households, balancing their new roles with more traditional

community notions of gender. Traditional patron-client relations may have facilitated Maya entry

into the migrant circuit, but these very same relations-with their accompanying rigid social

structures-continue to prevent Maya entry into Ladino-dominated economic activities.

Paradoxically, inter-ethnic marriages and the equalizing influences of U.S. racial categories

(which ignore the historical differences between Mayas and Ladinos) create a new environment

in Pinula in which younger migrants are likely to challenge long-standing ethnic divides. The

resulting ethnic tensions and inter-ethnic dynamics in San Pedro Pinula suggest that international

migration is facilitating fundamental alterations to the Guatemalan social structure, even though

the changes continue to be tempered by 500 years of Ladino domination.