Afro-Mexicans Are Pushing for Legal Recognition in Mexico's National Constitution Walter Thompson-Hernandez - Remezcla
go to original November 14, 2015

Portrait of an Afro-Mexican by photographer Mara Sanchez Renero. (CNN)

The myth of the Latin American racial democracy, scholars believe, began in Brazil following the abolishment of slavery in 1888, when government officials declared that high rates of racial mixing had officially absolved the nation of its racial problems. This thinking eventually transcended Brazil and spread to a host of other Latin America countries, including Mexico.

But Mexico had its own nuanced understanding of the Latin American racial democracy – one called mestizaje, that was created by government officials, intellectuals, and artists following the 1910 Mexican Revolution: the erroneous belief that Mexico’s ethnic and racial mixture was solely composed of indigenous and European ancestry. This was also a time period when Mexico’s citizenry began to believe that “Mexicanness” and blackness were mutually exclusive and could not co-exist. Mestizaje, however, did not only exclude blackness from its national patrimony, but also left out a host of other racial identities from Mexico’s conversation about race.

Today, the effects of these racial systems continue to disproportionately impact the descendants of the enslaved Africans brought to Mexico between the 16th and 18th centuries. Afro-Mexicans, in states like Veracruz, Guerrero, and Oaxaca, not only continue to experience structural, economic and political neglect, but also exist in a country where they are not formally recognized as a distinct ethnic and racial group. (To that end, Mexico and Chile are the only two countries in Latin America that do no formally recognize their Afro-descendants).

While Afro-Mexicans continue to receive an increase in international recognition, domestically their treatment still serves as a vivid reminder of the clear racial disparities that this population faces.

Read the rest at Remezcla

Related: A Student Traveling Through Costa Chica Picked Up a Camera to Let Afro-Mexicans Tell Their Story (Remezcla)

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