The Amsterdam News spoke with Dr. J. Jesús María Serna Moreno, who was born in Atoyac de Álvarez, a city in Mexico’s southwestern state of Guerrero; became an anthropologist; and is a retired researcher at the University of Mexico’s (UNAM) Center for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean (CIALC). Serna is also a member of Afroindoamerica and the Global Anti-Racist Network. Serna was influenced by the anthropologist Gonzalo Aguirre Beltrán—one of the foremost pioneers of Afro Mexican and Indigenous studies—and has contributed throughout his career to Afro Mexican studies in the new global realities of the world. His book, “Afrodescendientes y diversidad étnico-cultural en México y nuestra América (Afrodescendants and Cultural Diversity in Mexico/2015),” is a reference for understanding today’s Afro Mexican struggle.
Asked for an estimate of the current Afro Mexican population, Serna said there are almost 2.4 million Afro Mexicans in total, representing 1.2% of the national population. Most live in Veracruz, Guerrero, and Oaxaca, but they are also found in 23 other states. Their current situation is that “although their existence has been legally recognized in the constitution, they are still suffering from acts of racism and discrimination. They are often forced to sing and prove they know the national anthem because authorities mistake them as foreign migrants. They lack budgetary support from the government. There are no public policies dedicated to them. Many other Mexicans do not even know of their existence.”
Serna said efforts are being made to make sure people know about Afro Mexicans throughout the national territory; “in particular, the claims of the Blacks of the Costa Chica of Guerrero-Oaxaca, of Veracruz, and of the “Mascogos” who have already been granted, although in a very limited way, legal recognition so that public policies can be created to benefit them. Until now, Afro Mexicans have been ignored by the Mexican government.”
Seminoles or Cimarrons?
According to Serna, the cimarrons, or maroon people, emerged throughout the American continent as millions of Africans struggled against being kidnapped and enslaved in the Americas.
“The so-called Mascogos, a bi-national migrant people, also known as Black Seminoles, are a mixture of Florida’s Muscogee or Creek Indians and African Maroons who fled from slavery in the United States,” he said. “They were deported in the 19th century to a region that became Texas and then had to flee that area as well. They arrived in Mexico in the 19th century when Benito Juarez was president. They live in a community called El Nacimiento, near Múzquiz, Coahuila, in the north of the Mexican republic.
“The purpose of our research is to study the processes of Africanization of the Indian and Indianization of the African that can be found both in Mexico and in our America, and to look at their relationship to capitalist domination in regimes of internal colonialism. We want to further our study of the mestizaje that took place during the colonial period in New Spain and, most recently, in the Mexican republic.”
Mestizaje took place not only between Spaniards and Indians, Serna noted: It also included the children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, etc., of the Black Africans who were forcibly brought to work as slaves in the mines, on the sugar cane plantations, in domestic service and in so many other fundamental activities for the development of New Spain’s colonial economy.
“At present, there is irrefutable evidence of the little-known Black history presence in our mestizaje. In some regions, like the Sotavento in Veracruz, the evidence of mestizaje relations between Spaniards and Blacks is very high,” he said.
“‘Indianization of the African and Africanization of the Indian,’ a theoretical proposal of Dr. Luz Maria Martinez Montiel, reveals a historical-cultural phenomenon that she has called ‘Afroindianity.’ Afro-descendants and Indigenous people share spaces in our America and during colonial times, the Indigenous and Africans or Afro-descendants were in the majority, living alongside the Spaniards.
The principal mestizaje in many regions, such as along the coasts of present-day Guerrero and Oaxaca, was between the Afro and Indigenous populations.
Today’s Mexican government needs to approve the secondary laws that will make Afro Mexicans collective subjects of law, which will help with their legal recognition, Serna said.