When she's not in classes at the College of Marin, Rosario Chacón, 23, tutors other students in economics and statistics. She's preparing to transfer to a four-year college next fall and hoping UC Berkeley will accept her.

Chacón's student life is a far cry from her childhood in a Mayan village in the Mexican state of Yucatan -- where her parents studied only as far as second grade and she contributed to the income for her family of 12 by selling bananas on the street.

Though she managed to attend a good high school in Mérida, the state capital, Chacón knew she could not afford to go on to college, as most of her classmates would. So at age 18, she followed three of her brothers to the United States in search of a new life.

Earlier this month, Chacón got the attention of officials sent to the Bay Area by the governor of Yucatán to meet with the fast-growing population of Yucatec immigrants in California.

At a recent community meeting at a center in San Rafael's Canal District, Chacón thanked the government officials for making the trip and exhorted her two dozen assembled paisanos to get organized among themselves.

"We need to speak up for ourselves," she said, adding that established immigrants can teach new arrivals about how U.S. society works, about their rights, and about resources that will help them get settled.

Chacón is one of thousands of immigrants from the Yucatán who have settled in the Bay Area in recent years, the latest wave of Mexican migrants from a region that until recently had sent few people to the United States.

The numbers are hard to pin down, but the Mexican consulate in San Francisco issued 1,600 consular identification cards to Yucatecos last year alone, and officials estimate there could be as many as 10,000 Yucatecos in the Bay Area, with perhaps three times as many in Southern California. Though their numbers are still small compared to immigrants from other parts of Mexico, their presence is significant: Mexican officials say workers from the Yucatán send home $50 million a year.

After the meeting, Chacón exchanged business cards with Fernando Molina, the governor's representative, who visited California with a trio of state anthropologists. Molina put her in touch with the Federación Yucateco, a more established group in Anaheim. Since then, she and a handful of others have formed their own Alianza de Yucatecos de Marin and plan a trip to meet with their counterparts in Anaheim.

This is the first time the Yucatec government has reached out to immigrants here, said Molina, who hopes they will take the lead in asking for what they need.

"I see a tremendous desire to get organized," he said. "But they distrust the Mexican government. They had to come to this country because they couldn't make a living in Mexico."

In San Rafael, almost all the Yucatecos, including Chacón and her brothers, hail from the town of Peto. San Francisco has become a destination for Yucatecos from the town of Oxkutzcab, with friends and family members following in the footsteps of a handful of immigrants from a generation ago.

"People tend to come to a place where they know someone," said Renée Saucedo, who runs the San Francisco Day Laborer program and has seen a sharp increase in Mayan immigrants from both the Yucatán and Chiapas, in southern Mexico. "Many are young men, some even underage, who are here without their families to work and send money home. Because of language barriers and cultural stigmas, they have to surpass unique obstacles."

Saucedo, who was born in the United States but traces her roots to Mérida,

enjoys the growing presence of Yucatec food and culture in the Mission District where she works. At least three restaurants have opened over the past few months within a few blocks of the 16th Street BART station.

At a 16th Street cafe in San Francisco's Mission District, Efrain Poot began serving up Yucatec food this autumn.

"I speak Maya with my Yucatec customers," said Poot, 28, as a waiter passed by with a heaping plate of panuchos, fried corn tortillas stuffed with beans and topped with shredded cabbage, chicken and pickled onion. "Thank God they support me and tell their friends to come."

Poot was born and raised in Oxkutzcab, where his parents were subsistence farmers.

"They're elderly now, and I'm supporting them," he said.

For seven years, Poot worked in restaurant kitchens around San Francisco, sometimes holding down two jobs to save enough money to send home. Today, Poot still puts in 16-hour days, but now he and his wife share a three-bedroom apartment with four others, rather than sleeping 12 to a room as they did at first.

Before Poot moved to the United States -- like many Yucatec immigrants -- he first worked in Mérida and Cancún, where he was exposed to American tourists and learned restaurant work and a bit of English.

"In Yucatán, they live three hours from the first world," said anthropologist Pedro Lewin, who was part of the delegation from Mexico. "So they arrive here a little better prepared than other Mexican migrants."

But for those who come speaking only Maya, the stress can be profound. "When these people leave their communities, there's a huge culture shock. There's a lot of displacement stress, and many are turning to alcohol and drugs," observed Diana Canto, director of the state-run Institute for the Development of Mayan Culture in Mérida, who visited the United States with Molina and Lewin.

Officials such as Molina were unaware of the scope of the migration until anthropologists began interviewing Mayan villagers and found that almost everyone had a relative in the United States or elsewhere abroad.

Canto launched the study and found that Yucatecos had settled in numerous states from Alaska to Florida.

Yucatán is the fourth poorest state in Mexico, after Chiapas, Oaxaca and Guerrero. Almost 60 percent of the population is Mayan, and, like most indigenous people throughout the Americas, they struggle against poverty and discrimination.

The exposure Mayan peasants have had to American wealth in the form of an expanding tourist trade on the Yucatán Peninsula's "Mayan Riviera" has coincided with the region's faltering agricultural economy.

Harley Shaiken, director of UC Berkeley's Center for Latin American Studies, said the opening of trade under NAFTA -- combined with the weak economy -- had put tremendous pressure on peasant communities and spurred migration.

"When you're pushed off the land, it increasingly becomes a straight shot north," he said.

There was talk at the San Rafael meeting about ways the immigrants could pool their resources to benefit their home community, Peto, perhaps by building a soccer field or buying the town a fire truck. And there are plans afoot for a visit from Yucatan Gov. Patricio Patrón in February.

"I think it's a good thing the government of Yucatán sent a representative here to see what the needs of the migrants are," said Elmy Bermejo, who is San Francisco district representative to state Sen. John Burton and a native of Oxkutzcab. "They're fueling the Yucatec economy, so I can understand that there's an interest in how they're doing here."

Chacón hopes that the fledgling Yucatec group in Marin will pass on Mayan culture to the next generation, but even more important, offer English classes for new immigrants.

"Most people are trying to survive, so they come here and they work," said Chacón. "I want them to realize it's very important to learn English and get an education, otherwise they will never see what their lives can be."

One local Yucateco who is working to both preserve Mayan culture and help new immigrants get their feet on the ground is Felipe Tapia, an agronomist from Peto who came to San Rafael three years ago and works in an ice cream shop. Tapia produces a weekly radio program in Yucatec Maya, which features music, news and lots of public service announcements.

"I want to help all the Yucatecos who speak Maya," he said. "I want to do a good program and give them all the information they need and can't get elsewhere."

Though life can be challenging for new immigrants with little education and few resources, Lewin, one of the Mexican anthropologists, says he thinks the presence of Yucatec Mayas in the United States could help raise the status of their kinsmen back home.

"Mayan culture has been damaged and disrespected in Mexico, but if the Yucatecos here are organized and sending money home and can negotiate with the government of the Yucatán, they may be taken more seriously in the Yucatán," said Lewin. "What's being created is a transnational Mayan community."