Although the financial remittances sent by male Mexican migrant workers residing in the United States can result in higher standards of living for their families and home communities, out-migration may lead to increased migrant problem drinking and sexual risk behaviors, which may in turn impact these same communities of origin. Based on semi-structured interviewing (n=60) and participant observation in a migrant sending community in central Mexico and a receiving community in the Northeastern United States, this paper explores the effects of out-migration on HIV risk and problem drinking among United States-based migrants from a small agricultural community in the Mexican state of Puebla. We argue that problem drinking and risky sexual behaviors among these migrant workers have had significant consequences for their home community in terms of diminished remittances, the introduction of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, and loss of husbands or kinsmen to automobile accidents. Moreover, although rumor and gossip between the two communities serve as a form of social control, they may also contribute to increased problem drinking and sexual risk.

En este artículo, planteo que la antropología social tiene que superar el empirismo de la cosa observada, pues tal epistemología contribuye a la clasificación de sujetos para su control. En contraposición, argumento que existe otro conocimiento con un carácter desafiante. Desarrollo esta idea a través de la respuesta a las siguientes cuestiones: 1) qué nos impide hacer explícitos nuestros compromisos éticos y políticos; 2) cómo superar nociones sustentadas en la cientificidad para incorporar experiencias de lucha de sectores subordinados, generalmente estudiados por los antropólogos; y 3) cómo crear conceptos basados en tales experiencias que desborden los entendimientos sobre el sujeto sustentados por una producción académica e intelectual dominantes.

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