Mexico’s black history is often ignoredPosted in Articles, Caribbean/Latin America, Mexico on 2012-03-14 00:45Z by Steven |
Mexico’s black history is often ignored
Los Angeles Times
2008-04-13
John L. Mitchell, Times Staff Writer
In Mexico, the story of the country’s black population has been largely ignored in favor of an ideology that declares that all Mexicans are “mixed race.” But it’s the mixture of indigenous and European heritage that most Mexicans embrace; the African legacy is overlooked.
“They are saying we are all the same and therefore there is no reason to distinguish yourself,” said Padre Glyn Jemmott, a Roman Catholic priest from Trinidad and Tobago who has had a parish of a dozen Costa Chican pueblos since 1984.
“What they are not saying is that in ordinary life in Mexico, lighter-skinned Mexicans are accepted and have first place,” he said.
Jemmott, a co-founder of Mexico Negro, an organization that seeks to promote cultural pride and political strength in the coastal pueblos, said many Costa Chicans often don’t fully understand what it means to be black in Mexico until they leave their region.
Some tell stories of being confronted in other parts of the country by police who refuse to believe they’re Mexican and sometimes accuse them of being there illegally…
…They were not taught the details of their history: that Spanish slavers took Africans to colonial Mexico (New Spain) in the 16th century, long before the first slaves arrived in Jamestown, Va.; that during the colonial period there were more Africans than Europeans in Mexico.
The Costa Chicans were also not taught that some of the blacks were not slaves; that blacks lived throughout what is now Mexico, working in mining, sugar plantations and fishing.
In some instances black Mexicans were explorers and co-founders of settlements, including Los Angeles.
Jose Maria Morelos, one of Mexico’s leaders for independence, was a mulatto, as was Vicente Guerrero, Mexico’s second president, who abolished slavery in 1822…
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