{"id":41449,"date":"2015-06-17T19:06:05","date_gmt":"2015-06-17T19:06:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=41449"},"modified":"2015-06-17T19:06:05","modified_gmt":"2015-06-17T19:06:05","slug":"black-mexicans-face-considerable-hurdles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=41449","title":{"rendered":"Black Mexicans face considerable hurdles"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/comptonherald.com\/black-mexicans-face-considerable-hurdles\/\" target=\"_blank\">Black Mexicans face considerable hurdles<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/comptonherald.com\" target=\"_blank\">Compton Herald<\/a><br \/>\n2015-06-05<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/alexisokeowo.wordpress.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Alexis Okeowo<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>Mexicanos negros (black Mexicans) face considerable hurdles; Afro-Mexicans are marginalized and excluded to the point that it is impossible to find any mention of them in official records<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The first town of freed African slaves in the Americas is not exactly where you would expect to find it \u2014 and it isn\u2019t exactly what you\u2019d expect to find either. First, it\u2019s not in the United States. <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Yanga,_Veracruz\" target=\"_blank\">Yanga<\/a>, on <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Gulf_Coast_of_Mexico\" target=\"_blank\">Mexico\u2019s Gulf Coast<\/a>, is a sleepy <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/pueblito\" target=\"_blank\">pueblito<\/a> founded by its namesake, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Gaspar_Yanga\" target=\"_blank\">Gaspar Yanga<\/a>, an African slave who led a rebellion against his Spanish colonial masters in the late 16th century and fought off attempts to retake the settlement. The second thing that is immediately evident to vistors who reach the town\u2019s rustic central plaza: there are virtually no blacks among the few hundred residents milling around the center of town.<\/p>\n<p>Mirroring Mexico\u2019s history itself, most of Yanga\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Afro-Mexican\" target=\"_blank\">Afro-Mexican<\/a> population has been pushed to neighboring rural villages that are notable primarily for their deep poverty and the strikingly dark skin of their inhabitants. Mexico\u2019s independence from Spain and new focus on building a national identity on the idea of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=14551\" target=\"_blank\"><em>mestizaje<\/em><\/a>, or mixed race, drove African Mexicans into invisibility as leaders chose not to count them or assess their needs. Now many blacks want to fight back by improving the shoddy education and social services available to them and are petitioning for the constitution to recognize Afro-Mexicans as a separate ethnic group worthy of special consideration&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"http:\/\/comptonherald.com\/black-mexicans-face-considerable-hurdles\/\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Black Mexicans face considerable hurdles Compton Herald 2015-06-05 Alexis Okeowo Mexicanos negros (black Mexicans) face considerable hurdles; Afro-Mexicans are marginalized and excluded to the point that it is impossible to find any mention of them in official records The first town of freed African slaves in the Americas is not exactly where you would expect [&hellip;]<\/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":[4633,5956,20261,5957,20262],"class_list":["post-41449","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-alexis-okeowo","tag-compton-herald","tag-gaspar-yanga","tag-yanga"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41449","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=41449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41449\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}