A Warm Welcome,
'When I first learnt of the racial classification of people, called the “Afro-Mexican”, meaning the mixture of the African and Mexican bloodline, I was shocked. Because for my whole life up until then, I had only been taught about African roots in North America. In a class lecture, my teacher unveiled a detailed, but short, lecture of the The Atlantic Slave Trade’s existence in Central and south America, and how those African slaves would combine with the Mexican civilization, to create the “Mestizaje”. As the child of a Mexican American mother, With an African American father, this interested me deeply.Even though I had never been to Mexico and barely thought of myself as a Mexican American I did have family members (especially my step family) who were first and second generation immigrants, and had a deep connection with Mexico. In them and various other encounters, I noticed African racism. Different from the racism I had noticed (Living in California), towards asians, where the main complaint was for the immigrants to return to their mother land. No, the racism I noticed of Mexicans against Africans was more deep rooted, They were hated for their skin color alone, the darker the worse. This racism lead to me to believe, (Naively) to a certain extent, that Africans did not exist in Mexico. This, to me, could be only explanation to this racism, a sort of excusable ignorance, maybe, but it simply isn't true. African descendents have had a presence, and documentation in Mexican culture since the start of the slave trade.
As a result of this one class lecture, I set out to do one thing for various reasons, uncover the African presence in Mexico. Firstly, to try and understand this deep seated racism still present to this day, even in the U.S. Secondly, for my own curiosity, to better understand a history of people whose racial mixture closely identifies with my own. And lastly to shed light on a lost race of people, a race of peoples history and influence has been hidden for centuries.
'When I first learnt of the racial classification of people, called the “Afro-Mexican”, meaning the mixture of the African and Mexican bloodline, I was shocked. Because for my whole life up until then, I had only been taught about African roots in North America. In a class lecture, my teacher unveiled a detailed, but short, lecture of the The Atlantic Slave Trade’s existence in Central and south America, and how those African slaves would combine with the Mexican civilization, to create the “Mestizaje”. As the child of a Mexican American mother, With an African American father, this interested me deeply.Even though I had never been to Mexico and barely thought of myself as a Mexican American I did have family members (especially my step family) who were first and second generation immigrants, and had a deep connection with Mexico. In them and various other encounters, I noticed African racism. Different from the racism I had noticed (Living in California), towards asians, where the main complaint was for the immigrants to return to their mother land. No, the racism I noticed of Mexicans against Africans was more deep rooted, They were hated for their skin color alone, the darker the worse. This racism lead to me to believe, (Naively) to a certain extent, that Africans did not exist in Mexico. This, to me, could be only explanation to this racism, a sort of excusable ignorance, maybe, but it simply isn't true. African descendents have had a presence, and documentation in Mexican culture since the start of the slave trade.
As a result of this one class lecture, I set out to do one thing for various reasons, uncover the African presence in Mexico. Firstly, to try and understand this deep seated racism still present to this day, even in the U.S. Secondly, for my own curiosity, to better understand a history of people whose racial mixture closely identifies with my own. And lastly to shed light on a lost race of people, a race of peoples history and influence has been hidden for centuries.