Doing Research in Mexico
Letters from Mexico
by Frans Jozef Schryer

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Doing Research in Mexico draws on correspondence between Frans Jozef Schryer and Catherine Foy (Schryer), shedding light on the methods social anthropologists employed before the widespread use of the internet and cell phones. It was once common for anthropologists to travel to remote places, so letter writing was the primary form of communication with other researchers, family, and friends. The letters presented in this book, spanning the late 1960s to late 1980s, cover a variety of topics relevant to research on rural Mexico (particularly the Alto Balsas region), navigating one’s way through the Mexican bureaucracy, dealing with politicians and priests, and coping with sickness. Doing Research in Mexico reveals to readers, especially those familiar with Schryer’s other work, information not covered in his earlier publications. This trove of correspondence provides additional insight into Schryer’s life history and his and Foy’s long-distance relationship during his extended stays abroad, while also documenting how to do research (both ethnographic and archival) in or on rural Mexico, the international migration of indigenous people from rural Mexico to urban centers in the United States, and relationships between anthropologist and other researchers, friends, and family members.

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Frans Jozef Schryer is a retired anthropologist who won the 1980 Honorable Mention Award for the James Alexander Robertson Memorial Prize, granted by the Conference on Latin American History for the most outstanding article published in 1980 in Hispanic American Historical Review. In addition, he was awarded the 1991 Erminie Wheeler-Voegelin Award for the best book-length work in ethnohistory, granted for Ethnicity and Class Conflict in Rural Mexico by the American Society for Ethnohistory. He has published a number of other books: They Never Come Back: A Story of Undocumented Workers (Cornell, 2014), Farming in a Global Economy: A Case Study of Dutch Immigrant Farmers in Canada (Brill, 2006), The Netherlands Presence in Ontario: Pillars, Class and Dutch Ethnicity (Wilfred Laurier Press, 1998), Ethnicity and Class Conflict in Rural Mexico (Princeton UP, 1990), Una burguesia campesina en la Revolución Mexicana (Ediciones Era, 1986), and The Rancheros of Pisaflores: The Case History of a Peasant Bourgeoisie in Twentieth Century Mexico (University of Toronto Press, 1980). Schryer enjoys hiking and lives in a condo in downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada, with his spouse (Catherine Schryer-Foy). They are both the eldest of eight children and have two adult children who live elsewhere.

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Contributors

Author

Frans Jozef Schryer

Illustrator

Paul Schultz