{"id":26731,"date":"2012-11-28T22:40:17","date_gmt":"2012-11-28T22:40:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=26731"},"modified":"2013-07-01T21:24:36","modified_gmt":"2013-07-01T21:24:36","slug":"afro-latin-and-the-negro-common-an-interview-with-dr-marco-polo-hernandez-cuevas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=26731","title":{"rendered":"Afro-Latin And The Negro Common: An Interview With Dr. Marco Polo Hern\u00e1ndez-Cuevas"},"content":{"rendered":"

Afro-Latin And The Negro Common: An Interview With Dr. Marco Polo Hern\u00e1ndez-Cuevas<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Racialicious<\/a>
\n2012-09-05<\/p>\n

Lamont Lilly<\/strong><\/p>\n

Marco Polo Hern\u00e1ndez-Cuevas<\/a> is the Interim Chair of the Department of Modern Foreign Languages at North Carolina Central University, where his interests lie in Transatlantic and Diaspora Studies. He is the author of five books, including The Africanization of Mexico from the Sixteenth Century Onward<\/a><\/em> (2010) and Africa in Mexico: A Repudiated Heritage<\/a><\/em> (2007). He is the founder and director of the Mexican Institute of Africana Studies. Read along as we discuss: Colonialism, Gaspar Yanga, Ivan Van Sertima and Mexico\u2019s Little Black Sambo.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Lamont Lilly:<\/strong> Dr. Cuevas, as only the second individual I know to describe themselves as Afro-Mexican can you share some insight on the cultural connections that exist within such a powerful ethic mix? And why have figures such as Gaspar Yanga<\/a> and Emiliano Zapata<\/a> been omitted from history\u2019s reference of heralded freedom fighters?<\/em><\/div>\n

Marco Polo Hern\u00e1ndez-Cuevas:<\/strong> Well, the reason you haven\u2019t heard many refer to themselves as Afro-Mexican is because this is a relatively new term that was first coined by Eurocentric scholars like Melville Herskovits. It was Gonzalo Aguirre Beltr\u00e1n who coined it in 1945 in Mexico City, during the foundational meeting of the Institute for African American Studies. However, that doesn\u2019t mean that a color consciousness didn\u2019t exist in Mexico. Prior to that, we had a host of names such as \u201cCasta,\u201d \u201cChilango,\u201d \u201cJarocho,\u201d and \u201cBoshito,\u201d all terms that refer to the lack of blood cleanliness of non-white persons. That would explain why many people in Mexico do not identify themselves as Afro-Mexican. They refer to themselves as Casta, or any of the other names previously mentioned. Recently however, there\u2019s been a movement in the South Pacific side of Mexico whereby Afro-Mexicans do not want to be called Afro-Mexican. They just want to be called N\u0115gro \u2014 Black. It erases the science and intellectuality of such embedded complexities…<\/p>\n

…LL:<\/strong> Whether Maroon, Zambo or so called Negro, most persons of color throughout the Western Hemisphere are all \u201cAfrican Hybrids\u201d of some varying degree. Considering such, how has colonialism maintained a successful barrier of division among our similar groups?<\/em><\/p>\n

Hern\u00e1ndez-Cuevas:<\/strong> These divisions you speak of Lamont, are engrained mostly through language. With the Spanish deploying a series of words that were heavily charged, yes, divisions were created. People were classified from the get-go when so-called \u201cmiscegenation<\/a>\u201d began. We were classified by the degree of whiteness we possessed. I don\u2019t believe in this miscegenation business. Though all human beings are really one, various social constructs were invented to perpetuate European supremacy.<\/strong> Within a social pyramid, \u201cpigmentocracy<\/a>\u201d was then introduced.<\/p>\n

In the case of Mexico\u2019s 500 years of colonization, which began in 1521, the physical colonization may have ended, but the mental \u201chold\u201d continues to a certain degree. Many Spanish Eurocentric mental prejudices linger today as healthy as ever. Just look at the Mexican public school books our children use. We should examine more critically the one or two paragraphs that refer to African ancestry and their contribution to the building of the Americas. I can assure you, you\u2019ll find very little, especially in Mexico. These barriers are nothing but the product of ignorance and manipulation. The trick is to unravel knowledge\u2013to create connections by exposing similarities rather than exploiting differences…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Afro-Latin And The Negro Common: An Interview With Dr. Marco Polo Hern\u00e1ndez-Cuevas Racialicious 2012-09-05 Lamont Lilly Marco Polo Hern\u00e1ndez-Cuevas is the Interim Chair of the Department of Modern Foreign Languages at North Carolina Central University, where his interests lie in Transatlantic and Diaspora Studies. He is the author of five books, including The Africanization of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1649,12,21,459,8,103],"tags":[4633,2343,12949,1605,6875],"class_list":["post-26731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anthropology","category-articles","category-latincarib","category-history","category-media-archive","category-mexico","tag-afro-mexicans","tag-afromexicans","tag-lamont-lilly","tag-marco-polo-hernandez-cuevas","tag-racialicious"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26731\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}