Mixed Race Studies

African Mexicans and the Discourse on Modern Nation

University Press of America
June 2004
136 pages
Paper ISBN: 0-7618-2858-3 / 978-0-7618-2858-7

Marco Polo Hernández Cuevas, Asssociate Professor of Spanish
North Carolina Central University

In African Mexicans and the Discourse on Modern Nation, author Marco Polo Hernández-Cuevas explores how the Africaness of Mexican mestizaje was erased from the national memory and identity and how national African ethnic contributions were plagiarized by the criollo elite in modern Mexico. The book cites the concept of a Caucasian standard of beauty prevalent in narrative, film, and popular culture in the period between 1920 and 1968, which the author dubs as the “cultural phase of the Mexican Revolution.”

The author also delves into how criollo elite disenfranchised non-white Mexicans as a whole by institutionalizing a Eurocentric myth whereby Mexicans learned to negate part of their ethnic makeup. During this time period, wherever African Mexicans, visibly black or not, are mentioned, they appear as “mestizo,” many of them oblivious of their African heritage, and others part of a willing movement toward becoming “white.” This analysis adopts as a critical foundation Richard Jackson’s ideas about black phobia and the white aesthetic, as well as James Snead’s coding of blacks.

Table of Contents

• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• The Revolution and Invisibility: African Mexicans and the Ideology of Mestizaje in La raza cósmica
• The Erased Africaness of Mexican Icons
• La vida inútil de Pito Pérez: Tracking the African Contribution to the Mexican Picaresque Sense of Humor
• Angelitos negros, a Film from the “Golden Age” of Mexican Cinema: Coding Visibly Black Mestizos By and Through a Far-Reaching Medium
• Modern National Discourse and La muerte de Artemio Cruz: The Illusory “Death” of African Mexican Lineage
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index

Casta Painting: Images of Race in Eighteenth-Century Mexico

Yale University Press
2004-04-10
252 pages
8 1/2 x 11
100 b/w +100 color illus.
Paper ISBN: 9780300109719
Cloth ISBN: 9780300102413

Ilona Katzew, Associate Curator of Latin American Art
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Selected for Honorable Mention for a 2003-2004 Book Award given by the Association for Latin American Art.

The pictorial genre known as casta painting is one of the most compelling forms of artistic expression from colonial Mexico. Created as sets of consecutive images, the works portray racial mixing among the main groups that inhabited the colony: Indians, Spaniards, and Africans. In this beautifully illustrated book, Ilona Katzew places casta paintings in their social and historical context, showing for the first time the ways in which the meanings of the paintings changed along with shifting colonial politics.

The book examines how casta painting developed art historically, why race became the subject of a pictorial genre that spanned an entire century, who commissioned and collected the works, and what meanings the works held for contemporary audiences. Drawing on a range of previously unpublished archival and visual material, Katzew sheds new light on racial dynamics of eighteenth-century Mexico and on the construction of identity and self-image in the colonial world.

Table of Contents

• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. Painters and Paintings: A Visual Tradition and Its Historiography
• 2. “A Marvelous Variety of Colors?”: Racial Ideology and the Sistema de Castas
• 3. The Rise of Casta Painting: Exoticism and Creole Pride, 1711-1760
• 4. Changing Perspectives: Casta Painting in the Era of the Bourbon Reforms, 1760-1790
• 5. The Theater of Marvels: Casta Paintings in the Textual Microcosmos
• Concluding Remarks: A Genre with Many Meanings
• Abbreviations
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Photograph Credits
• Index

Mulattas and Mestizas: Representing Mixed Identities in the Americas, 1850–2000

University of Georgia Press
2003-01-27
284 pages
Trim size: 6 x 9
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8203-2325-1
Paper ISBN: 978-0-8203-2781-5

Suzanne Bost, Associate Professor of English
Loyola University

In this broadly conceived exploration of how people represent identity in the Americas, Suzanne Bost argues that mixture has been central to the definition of race in the United States, Mexico, and the Caribbean since the nineteenth century. Her study is particularly relevant in an era that promotes mixed-race musicians, actors, sports heroes, and supermodels as icons of a “new” America. Bost challenges the popular media’s notion that a new millennium has ushered in a radical transformation of American ethnicity; in fact, this paradigm of the “changing” face of America extends throughout American history.

Working from literary and historical accounts of mulattas, mestizas, and creoles, Bost analyzes a tradition, dating from the nineteenth century, of theorizing identity in terms of racial and sexual mixture. By examining racial politics in Mexico and the United States; racially mixed female characters in Anglo-American, African American, and Latina narratives; and ideas of mixture in the Caribbean, she ultimately reveals how the fascination with mixture often corresponds to racial segregation, sciences of purity, and white supremacy. The racism at the foundation of many nineteenth-century writings encourages Bost to examine more closely the subtexts of contemporary writings on the “browning” of America.

Original and ambitious in scope, Mulattas and Mestizas measures contemporary representations of mixed-race identity in the United States against the history of mixed-race identity in the Americas. It warns us to be cautious of the current, millennial celebration of mixture in popular culture and identity studies, which may, contrary to all appearances, mask persistent racism and nostalgia for purity.

Representations of the Black Body in Mexican Visual Art: Evidence of an African Historical Presence or a Cultural Myth?

Journal of Black Studies
Volume 39, Number 5 (May 2009)
pages 761-785
DOI: 10.1177/0021934707301474

Wendy E. Phillips, Photographer
Atlanta, GA

Although Africans have been present in Mexico since the time of the Afro-Atlantic slave trade, the larger Mexican culture seems to have forgotten this aspect of its history.  Although the descendents of these original Africans continue to live in the communities of coastal Oaxaca, Guerrero, and Veracruz states, many Mexicans seem to be unaware of their existence. This article reviews works of visual art made from the 1700s through the present that represent images of Mexicans of African descent and provide evidence of a historical Afromestizo presence in Mexico.  The works are also considered as possible sources of evidence about prevailing attitudes about Mexicans of African descent and anxieties about race mixing.  This article provides a brief overview of Mexico’s historical relationship with Africa as a participant in the Afro-Atlantic slave trade and considers the work of muralists, painters, and photographers who have created works of art in various regions of the country.

Read or purchase the article here.