Historical Scholarship: Afro Mexicans As An Integral Part of the Evolution of Mexico and Their Invisibility
Afro-Mexicans: An
Integral Part of the Evolution of Mexico and Their Invisibility
African people have been present in South America since the 15th century. They originally accompanied the Iberian explorers and Spanish conquistadors who came to the west in search of lands with valuable resources, which their monarchies could convert into goods for consumption and trade, and into wealth for the benefit of their nation. Explorers from the Iberian Peninsula became familiar with the people on the continent of Africa nearer to the beginning of the first millennium, through trade and exploration along the Nile and Congo tributary systems. From the initiation of their exploration, the Spaniards utilized African servants as personal assistants, translators during exploration, and soldiers. “From the very start of conquest of what is now Mexico, Africans arrived alongside the Spanish, both voluntarily as conquistadores – and as slaves. Many intermarried with indigenous people and some Afro-Mexicans have played prominent roles in the country’s history – including the independence hero José María Morelos and early president Vicente Guerrero.”[1] As the Spanish conquest forged on, the combination of many battles for land between the Spaniards and the Aztecs, along with the Smallpox virus, began to decimate the number of Indigenous people who could be used as agricultural and mining slaves. The Spaniards, as the Portuguese had done, then turned attention to the continent of Africa for the human labor required to exploit the land of Mexico. “The native slave labor pool began to dwindle because of disease and by the fact that the indigenous were not used to the harsh working conditions imposed upon them by the Spanish. As the captive labor force diminished, King Charles the Fifth of Spain allowed slaves to be imported into the Spanish territories in the New World.”[2] With permission to exploit Africans as the source of slave labor for the “New World”, the Spanish began to purchase West African chattel with the intention of increasing agricultural production and the amount of precious metals retrieved from the mines; during this era, the number of African slaves began to outgrow the number of Peninsulares in the Spanish colony, although neither group would grow to outnumber the indigenous people on their homeland. “The point that must be made here is the fact that the black population in the early colony was by far larger than that of the Spanish. In 1570 we see that the black population is about 3 times that of the Spanish. In 1646, it is about 2.5 times as large, and in 1742, blacks still outnumber the Spanish. It is not until 1810 that Spaniards are more numerous.”[3] There were groups of Africans who dared to run away from bondage in Mexico.
There is one faction in particular which is known for its resistance to being enslaved; it is recognized as the first settlement of Africans in the West to be freed from colonialism. “The first community of freed blacks in the Americas was founded in Mexico in 1608. In 1537 there was a small slave rebellion led by a man named Gaspar Yanga also called Nyanga in what is now the Mexican state of Veracruz. 40 years after the revolt, Spanish authorities recognized the former slaves’ right to exist as free men and the community of San Lorenzo de los Negros, today called Yanga, was given limited autonomy by the Spanish Crown.”[4] Although the freedom of this group was maintained by officials, Africans were not given consideration as citizens. They were often portrayed in negative scenarios and accused of performing unsavory acts. In addition, caricatures of Blacks with exaggerated features have been used often in Mexico. “Furthermore, due to the existence of Afro-Mexicans being regularly overlooked or even outright denied by many, some black Mexicans have been challenged by authorities on their identity, sometimes assumed to be illegal immigrants and ‘deported’ to Central America despite holding Mexican nationality and the papers to prove it. It’s this culture of discrimination that perhaps leads some Mexicans with black heritage to be reluctant to admit or embrace their heritage.”[5]
However, because African
slaves during this time were relegated to peonage, just as the Aztecs had been,
there began a mixing of these origins, along with religious assimilation and
amalgamation with Spaniards. “Many Spanish slave owners in colonial Mexico had
children with female slaves and those children became a new class of people
collectively called mulato. In the colonial caste system, those with one black
and one indigenous parent were called zambos. In general, black people were
seen as “the other” in this period of Mexican history, something exotic and
alien. In the records of the Spanish Inquisition in Mexico City there is an
overrepresentation of people of African birth and African descent being tried
for sexual dereliction and witchcraft. As many black people in this time period
held on to vestiges of their African religious beliefs, there were quite a few
people who were accused of being sorcerers and witches. There is even a famous
legend of a woman known as La Mulata de Córdoba, which exists in Mexico to this
day. A black woman who was jailed for practicing witchcraft in Veracruz asked
her jailer for a piece of charcoal so she could pass the time drawing pictures
in her jail cell. According to the legend, she drew a picture of a ship,
recited a magical incantation and then jumped into the picture, thus escaping
jail.”[6]
African descendants in Mexico, many of which were relocated from the Caribbean colonies that existed during this period, were mainly concentrated around the coastal area of Mexico, like Guerrero, Oaxaca and Veracruz, although they also resided in locations such as Mexico City. The remnants of the slave class residing in these areas were classified, but not treated as Mestizos because their African heritage. “Black slaves began arriving in greater numbers in Mexico starting in the 1580s, mostly to work the plantations in Mexico’s tropical areas, to work in the ever-growing silver mines and to be put to use in the textile industry. Sometimes slaves came directly from Africa, but also many came from the Caribbean territories. There were two main types of classifications for African slaves in colonial Mexico: Retintos and amulatados. The first group were swarthier and had a physical build for hard labor. The second group were of slighter build and sometimes with lighter skin and were generally used as house servants or to perform various menial tasks. In the 1500s and 1600s a slave usually cost around 400 pesos.”[7] The complete presence of Africans residing in Mexico, was utterly ignored as if Africans had no place in Mexican history. After the Mexican revolution, nationalism was promoted in an effort to unify people by removing the issue of race in their country. “La Raza Cósmica or simply, La Raza, a term used by many Mexicans and Mexican Americans alike is usually used to describe the blending of Spanish and Indian to create a new ethnicity entirely, a separate and distinct identity.
What is often left out of this “blend” are
cultural and genetic influences from Africa, and hence the surprise expressed
in the YouTube videos from DNA test result recipients. Not many people are
aware that on average, Mexicans have 4% African blood in them and less is
known about African contributions to Mexican culture and history. When the
topic of African influence in Mexico comes up, it is often mentioned that any
sort of blackness has been “washed out” or has “blended in” to the national
culture and gene pool, and historically, little attention has been given to
it.” [8] This effort could not negate
the physical traits of Afro Mexicans, which have categorized them and
marginalized them by the appearance of melanin in their skin, without having to
check a box for ethnicity on an application. There is no way assimilate skin
tones. “The Afro-Mexican population has long struggled for recognition in an
overwhelmingly mestizo country where the indigenous past is lionized but
lighter skin colour is often reflected in social advancement and higher
incomes.”[9] Mexican nationalism previously
only recognized two origins of the Mexican people, Spanish and Aztec, in spite
of the contributions to Mexican history and DNA made by Africans. Even though
the majority of Afro Mexicans are also mixed with Latin and Indigenous blood,
they are still the slightest recognized group of Mexican citizens. They have
been invisible in their home country and subsequently, to the entire world. The
Afro Mexicans which have been part of communities in Mexico since the arrival
of the conquistadors, have continued to be isolated in the familiar lands of
the coastal areas which welcomed them to the South American continent.
Mexico outlawed the slave trade in their
country during the 19th century, after their fight for Independence.
Africans were not enslaved anymore, but this did nothing to improve the position
of Afro Mexicans in Mexican society or possibility for upward mobility by
Africans in Mexico. “Over 100 rebellions, insurrections and conspiracies
occurred between 1523 and 1823. The outcome was a rebellion spirit among the
oppressed and targeted classes, making New Spain one of the first places to
resist slavery (Simms, 2008). The slave trade was abolished on December 19, 1817,
and following Mexico's independence, the Vicente Guerrero regime abolished
slavery (on paper) in 1829 without much opposition from traditional pro-slavery
forces, except for its territory of Texas.”[10] In Mexico, there was no
Jim Crow and Black Codes did not exist as a means to terrorize former African
slaves, like in the United States. However, having been relegated to the slave
class left them impoverished and unable to capture a place in Mexican polite
society. The erasure of their visibility was congruent to the ways they were
thought of by other Mexicans.
In addition to the
Africans imported during Mexico’s history with slavery, there was another group
of people that descended from Africans, who fled bondage in the United States
during the 1800’s. They were members of the Seminole nation of Native Americans.
Many members of this tribe were the product of Seminole Indians and their
African slaves, with whom they intermarried and raised families. As the United
States began to remove the native people from the state of Florida, a large
group of Seminoles chose to take the southern end of the underground railroad
and fled to Mexico rather than fall victim to the Trail of Tears, which relocated
Indigenous Americans in states being settled by European immigrants, to
territories that had no obvious land value, such as Oklahoma. “A second
migration to Mexico of people of African descents began almost immediately
after the country achieved its independence. As Mexico outlawed slavery in
1829, escaping to Mexico became an objective of many enslaved African Americans
wishing to flee ‘the peculiar institution.’ The trickle across the Rio Grande
grew larger with time. Many Americans are unaware that a branch of the Underground
Railroad went south instead of north, thus funneling hundreds of escaped slaves
into the northern part of Mexico. A famous group of blacks called the Mascogos,
comprised of escaped slaves and freemen, numbering into the hundreds, left the
plantations of Florida and made the dangerous overland journey crossing several
southern states, eventually making it to northern Mexico, settling in the town
of El Nacimiento in the state of Coahuila.”[11] Another historical
account of this migration asserts, “During the Seminole Wars in the United
States some of the freed slaves settled with the Seminoles in what was then
slavery-free Florida and fought against Andrew Jackson’s encroaching troops as
he moved in to take the newly purchased Florida back to a slavery state. They
fought for their freedom alongside the Seminole tribe in Florida but were
eventually forced to abandon their land and relocate to Arkansas and Oklahoma.
Some slaves took a small detour from the march to the west and escaped to
northern Mexico where they had heard slavery was illegal.”[12]
Although there
were provisions made for the indigenous people of Mexico to have their land
returned to them after the Spanish Inquisition, Afro Mexicans still have not met
recovery from the marginalization which they experienced during the Spanish
colonization of Mexico. The religious homogony Catholic Spain imposed on Mexico
as a country, without tolerance of religious pluralism, did not translate to
the racial homogeny that the nation of Mexico wanted to boast. As if they were purposely
not included in post-colonial Mexican society, Mexicans of African ancestry
became even further removed from this order, while memories of the
contributions of their predecessors became either whitewashed or extinct. As
one person of Afro Mexican heritage explains it, “Until a few years ago, most
Mexicans had no real idea about how many Afro-descendants existed, where they
live or how they live. Afro-descendants are part of who we are as a country,
part of our history, our culture and ethnic background but most Mexicans do not
know much about them. We do not know about our third root.”[13] This notion of concealing
Afro Mexicans, left many African descendants in Mexico unaware of that sector
of their heritage until recent years. It has also caused darker skinned
Mexicans with African bloodlines to be treated as if they are not nationals,
but rather as visitors or transplants from the Caribbean. “Increased mestizaje
in Mexico has led to a change in phenotype characteristics that have led to a
lack of ethnic consciousness among migrant costeños. Moreover, cultivating ally
and solidarity relationships becomes challenging between Afro-Mexicans and
African Americans who struggle with recognizing Mexican blackness. (Vaughn,
Vinson, 2011)”[14]
Afro Mexicans still experience these issues today, even though they are
becoming increasingly visible and more relevant in Mexican society. If asked,
some will tell you they are constantly queried about their heritage, which
country they are visiting from, and even regularly hassled upon returning to
Mexico after traveling. One account of an Afro Mexican women speaks of her
realized connection to the African Diaspora, after her features were compared
to those of a Columbian woman; “Proclaiming myself Afro-Mexican breaks with the
invisibility that cuts across my personal and national history; it’s important
that people know about me so they can identify with what I’m saying. By walking
hand-in-hand and building community with other Black Mexican people—as well as
Afro-descendants of other nationalities—I’ve seen the diversity of Blackness,
which cannot be reduced to a phenotype, skin colour, hair texture, or culture.
And it’s essential that we recognise that diversity.”[15]
In conclusion, Afro Mexicans are underrepresented in the view of Mexican culture that is shared in their country and with the world. Until recently there was no distinction of African descendants in Mexico and their plights seemed to go perpetually unrecognized.” Lauded by civil rights groups and social activists, this was the first time in Mexican history that the government formally reached out to acknowledge Mexicans of African descent. In the 2020 census, the term “Afro-Mexican” will be a formal racial and ethnic category. A full 500 years after the Spanish Conquest of Mexico, the descendants of Mexico’s first African settlers will finally get the formal recognition they have long deserved. “[16] Today, Afromexicanos view themselves as a part of Mexican history and as a part of the African Diaspora, which covers the globe, The parts of Mexican culture which were contributions of Africans brought to the colony are ever present in the food, the music, and the dance of Mexicans in the 21st century. “Culturally speaking, much Mexican cuisine shows rich African influence, thanks to the use of peanuts, plantain (which arrived via the Canary Islands) and tropical fruits like cassava, malanga, taro and sweet potatoes. However, the principal African legacy in Mexico comes undoubtedly from music and dance, from Veracruz’s son jarocho style of music (of which La Bamba is the most famous example) to the Danza de los Diablos along the Costa Chica and the use of the typically Afro-Mexican musical instruments guijada (a percussive made from donkey jawbone) and bote (a friction drum).”[17] Even important figures in Mexican history, like Colonel Amelio Robles Ávila and Emiliano Zapata, who were previously “white washed” of their African ancestry, are now celebrated figures of Afro Mexican Heritage, including Mexico’s beloved Guerrera.
[1] Argen,
David, El Reportero, Thursday March 19, 2020,
www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/19/afro-mexicans-census-history-identity
[2] Bitto,
Robert, Afro-Mexicans, a Hidden Heritage, POSTED JANUARY 22, 2018,
https://mexicounexplained.com/afro-mexicans-hidden-heritage
[3] Vaugn,
Bobby, 2016, HISTORICAL SKETCH Blacks in Mexico – A Brief Overview,
https://afromexico.com/historical-sketch
[4] Bitto,
Robert, Afro-Mexicans, a Hidden Heritage, POSTED JANUARY 22, 2018,
https://mexicounexplained.com/afro-mexicans-hidden-heritage
[5] Cocking,
Lauren, Northern England Writer, 8 October 2019,
https://theculturetrip.com/north-america/mexico/articles/the-untold-history-of-afro-mexicans-mexicos-forgotten-ethnic-group
[6] Bitto,
Robert, Afro-Mexicans, a Hidden Heritage, POSTED JANUARY 22, 2018,
https://mexicounexplained.com/afro-mexicans-hidden-heritage/)
[7] Bitto,
Robert, Afro-Mexicans, a Hidden Heritage, POSTED JANUARY 22, 2018,
https://mexicounexplained.com/afro-mexicans-hidden-heritage/)
[8] Bitto,
Robert, Afro-Mexicans, a Hidden Heritage, POSTED JANUARY 22, 2018,
https://mexicounexplained.com/afro-mexicans-hidden-heritage/)
[9] Argen,
David, El Reportero, Thursday March 19, 2020,
www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/19/afro-mexicans-census-history-identity
[10] Galindo
Valadez, Jacqueline, Slavery in Mexico & Afro-Mexican Identity,
https://www.arcgis.com/apps/MapJournal/index.html?appid=2c3f90ee8f314dac8d6c621033fca473
[11] Bitto,
Robert, Afro-Mexicans, a Hidden Heritage, POSTED JANUARY 22, 2018,
https://mexicounexplained.com/afro-mexicans-hidden-heritage
[12] Amador
Muniz, Alvaro Published on Saturday, February 24, 2018,
https://mexiconewsdaily.com/opinion/the-untold-history-of-mxs-afro-descendants/
[13] Amador
Muniz, Alvaro Published on Saturday, February 24, 2018,
https://mexiconewsdaily.com/opinion/the-untold-history-of-mxs-afro-descendants/
[14].Galindo
Valadez, Jacqueline, Slavery in Mexico & Afro-Mexican Identity,
https://www.arcgis.com/apps/MapJournal/index.html?appid=2c3f90ee8f314dac8d6c621033fca473
[15] Cocking,
Lauren, Northern England Writer, 8 October 2019,
https://theculturetrip.com/north-america/mexico/articles/the-untold-history-of-afro-mexicans-mexicos-forgotten-ethnic-group
[16] Bitto,
Robert, Afro-Mexicans, a Hidden Heritage, POSTED JANUARY 22, 2018,
https://mexicounexplained.com/afro-mexicans-hidden-heritage
[17] Cocking,
Lauren, Northern England Writer, 8 October 2019,
https://theculturetrip.com/north-america/mexico/articles/the-untold-history-of-afro-mexicans-mexicos-forgotten-ethnic-group
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