Over the last century hundreds of thousands of Mexicans have migrated to the United States in search of a living wage. Particularly in the 1980s, thousands of indigenous people made the 3,000 mile trip from the southern state of Oaxaca, many illegally crossing the border, to find work in Los Angeles. Working for the rich, they became America's new poor. While their families lived off the dollars sent home, rural Mexicans also paid a price - in community and cultural disintegration.

Gaspar Rivera, now a professor at the University of Southern California, was one of those immigrants. He explains what happened in the early 1980s: "There was the peso devaluation, the economy was in a tailspin, and the heaviest negative impact was on the countryside. The presidents at the time came up with an economic plan to take advantage of Mexico as a Third World country with cheap labour to get inserted into the global economy. However, rural Mexico did not have a place within this new economic model."

As a result, a flood of poverty-stricken rural people made their way north, risking their lives to get into the United States illegally. And they are still coming. Juan Manuel, working as a gardener for rich Californian, tells his story: "I come from Oaxaca. I've been here for one year and two months. We come for a reason, many of us come to improve our way of life, to offer something better to our families - and I think that's my goal, more than anything. I'm never going to forget my journey here. Truthfully, I suffered a lot - like everyone else suffers when they cross. I walked a lot - that was the only difficult moment that I had, walking a long time over the mountains, thirsty and hungry." Every month, he sends $400 home to his father in Oaxaca.

Fernando Lopez Mateos and his sister started the Guelaguetza restaurant chain which has become the centre of the Oaxacan community in Los Angeles. People meet here to organise projects in their villages and send money back home. Fernando explains that they are a very close-knit community: "All Oaxacans care about supporting our communities because we see the standard of living there and we want to help it change a little bit. To support the economy of our homeland we organise dances, raffles, and fêtes to collect funds and send money to our hometowns. The amount of migration worries me - we leave our villages and we see other ways of life. We worry about the breakdown of our families... There are people here who haven't seen their wives or children for eight or ten years and that's not fair, that's not right."

While jobs in the United States bring money back home, the absence of men has lead to the breakdown of family life. In Oaxaca's neighbouring state of Veracruz, a fall in coffee and papaya prices recently forced the men to migrate. Lucretia is waiting in vain for her husband to come back: "The first time that he left he used to send us money but very little and now it's the same, he doesn't have a job. One day he works, the next he doesn't and also we don't hear from him... I was thinking of going to help him out so I also could earn some money, but it's not possible because I can't leave the children - and it is not easy because I think he's got another woman and he's going to stay there."

Christina Guerrero, a community worker, is worried for the future: "The main burden of migration falls on women and there is a social breakdown that is going to be accelerated. The husbands that come back have other customs and a different way of thinking - as a result, we don't even know if the drug addiction can get worse in this area, not to mention sexually transmitted diseases like AIDS."

In some small towns like Jaltiangius as many as 60 per cent of the population has gone to the States, where they earn up to 10 times what they can earn at home. Some towns write to men in Los Angeles begging them to return - and a few do. Porfirio Fernandez Ruiz returned to Oaxaca after 30 years in America. In his small town of San Francisco the only new houses are those built by emigrants - and they are empty, because the migrants are still away. There are only about 300 people left and the school is threatened with closure. "We've been talking with the rest of the people who live in Oaxaca City, in Mexico City and California. We are explaining them, we are making them know the situation before this town becomes a ghost town. We try to convince them to put some money together, come back to San Francisco, start any kind of work that will make them stay."

But the problem is not just one of diminishing numbers but also the disappearance of a unique language and culture. Migrants in Los Angeles are now trying to save their culture by funding income-generating projects in Oaxaca. One project supports indigenous production of mescal, an alcoholic drink like tequila made from the maguey plant, and has started a nursery to grow the maguey plant which children can get involved in. Mescal, now produced industrially, plays a key role in the culture of Oaxaca's Zapotec Indians.

Dr Armando Carlos Lopez Lopez explains: "It's a problem of migration, because so many of the children of many Zapotec people in the United States come back speaking English and the same thing is happening with mescal. We are a unique community in the world, the world capital of mescal... The maguey nursery project is unique because its main purpose is to help the community and teach young people from an early age that here you can invest, you can also get ahead and you don't necessarily have to migrate."

Crossing to the United States has become expensive and dangerous. Last year 369 people died from exposure or drowning. To try to deal with the situation, the Mexican Government is to give an emergency kit to immigrants who are trying to cross the border. But Gaspar Rivera disagrees with this solution: "I think it's outrageous that they're doing that because that's not going to help! That's not the problem! You know - these people are exposing themselves to these dangers because they don't see any alternative." He would rather see the Government give rural people incentives to stay on the land.

Jaime has decided to return home to Veracruz after having a bad experience in the States. "They locked us in the train and we were there with many people for 30 hours, locked in there. Thirty hours without drinking water, without moving your body, nothing! ... I came back because the life that I had there was very hard. I really love this place, this land..."

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