{"id":45512,"date":"2016-02-04T02:03:29","date_gmt":"2016-02-04T02:03:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=45512"},"modified":"2016-02-04T02:03:29","modified_gmt":"2016-02-04T02:03:29","slug":"mexico-finally-recognized-its-black-citizens-but-thats-just-the-beginning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=45512","title":{"rendered":"Mexico Finally Recognized Its Black Citizens, But That’s Just The Beginning"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mexico Finally Recognized Its Black Citizens, But That’s Just The Beginning<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The Huffington Post<\/a>
\n2016-01-27<\/p>\n

Krithika Varagur<\/strong><\/a>
\nAssociate Editor, What’s Working<\/p>\n

In Mexico, like everywhere, identity is complex.<\/em><\/p>\n

Last month, for the first time ever, the Mexican government recognized its 1.38 million citizens of African descent in a national survey. The survey served as a preliminary count before the 2020 national census, where “black” will debut as an official category.<\/p>\n

A major force behind the government’s recognition was M\u00e9xico Negro, an activist group founded in 1997 by Sergio Pe\u00f1aloza P\u00e9rez, a school teacher of African descent. M\u00e9xico Negro works for, among other initiatives, the constitutional recognition of Afro-Mexicans and to increase the visibility of Afro-Mexican culture.<\/p>\n

The Huffington Post recently caught up with Pe\u00f1aloza to discuss his organization, why recognition matters and what’s next for black Mexicans…<\/p>\n

…Why Has It Taken So Long?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Until last month, Mexico was one of only two Latin-American countries<\/span><\/a> (the other is Chile) to not officially count its black population. As a result, the move to recognize Afro-Mexicans has been met with some pushback from Mexicans who believe that mestizo identity<\/span><\/a> (the mix between indigenous people and Europeans) is more important than specific ethnicities.<\/p>\n

Mexico’s post-revolutionary government made a conscious effort to create a national mixed-race identity that melded Hispanic, indigenous and African ethnicities.\u00a0Article 2 of Mexico’s 1917\u00a0Constitution<\/span><\/a>\u00a0recognized its “multicultural composition,” and today,\u00a0over 60%<\/span><\/a> of Mexicans identify as mestizos.\u00a0So in modern Mexico, “blackness” is still a tenuous identity,<\/span><\/a>\u00a0and many use labels like\u00a0<\/strong>“criollo” (creole) or “moreno” rather than the ones black Mexicans tend to prefer.\u00a0Pe\u00f1aloza, for instance,\u00a0describes himself as “afrodescendiente (of African descent), negro (black), or afromexicano (Afro-Mexican).”…<\/p>\n

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

Mexico Finally Recognized Its Black Citizens, But That’s Just The Beginning The Huffington Post 2016-01-27 Krithika Varagur Associate Editor, What’s Working In Mexico, like everywhere, identity is complex. Last month, for the first time ever, the Mexican government recognized its 1.38 million citizens of African descent in a national survey. The survey served as a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1649,12,21,33,459,8,103],"tags":[4633,2343,22871,22870,2425],"class_list":["post-45512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anthropology","category-articles","category-latincarib","category-census","category-history","category-media-archive","category-mexico","tag-afro-mexicans","tag-afromexicans","tag-krithika-varagur","tag-sergio-penaloza-perez","tag-the-huffington-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45512","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=45512"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45512\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45513,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45512\/revisions\/45513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}