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In what is being hailed as a step forward for people of African descent, Mexico has for the first time recognized its Afro-Mexican population.  The decision reflects a larger issue of what it means to be Black in Latin America.

The Mexico national census is now accounting for the 1.38 million people of African ancestry, as theHuffington Post reports.  Since the 1910 Mexican Revolution, people of African descent have not been documented.  The Latin American nation has maintained a national identity of “mestizaje”–which ignored the descendants of African slaves, while acknowledging those who came from a mixed background of indigenous peoples and Spanish colonizers. And yet, this happened despite the role of people such as Gaspar Yanga, a national hero who established a free society of formerly enslaved Blacks, and Vicente Guerrero, one of the leading generals in the Mexican war of independence from Spain and the second president of Mexico.

As Colorlines has noted, Mexico and Chile have been the only Latin American nations to exclude its Black population from their constitution.  This has resulted in an invisibility of Black people in Mexico.  The advocacy organization, México Negro, initiated a campaign for formal recognition of Black people in the census in order to allocate more resources “so that the Mexican state pays off its historical debt with Afro Mexicans.” Afro-Mexicans have been fighting for this formal recognition for 15 years, according to Remezcla.

Representing 1.2 percent of the country’s population, Mexico’s population of African ancestry live primarily in three coastal states, including Veracruz, Oaxaca, and Guerrero, where they comprise about 7 percent of the population.  For the most part, they are less educated and have higher levels of poverty than the general population, according to Quartz.

The challenges facing people of African descent in Latin America are clear.  For example, the #BlackLivesMatter movement is resonating in Colombia, which boasts the second-largest Afro-descendant population in Latin America behind Brazil, as VICE reports.  Although Colombia has one of the most progressive legal frameworks for the protection of Black people—with a 1991 Constitution that recognizes Afro rights, affirmative action and declares the nation a “multicultural” and “multi-ethnic” society—the Black population has been neglected and excluded from the economy. Deprivation in the Pacific and Caribbean coasts has led to a Black migration to the cities, where Afro-Colombians suffer from extreme poverty, gang recruitment and violence.  And the two seats in Congress reserved for Afro politicians are currently filled by non-Black mestizos.  Further, there has been an increase in violence against Afro-Colombians, according to Al Jazeera, a reflection of systemic racism, and a civil war that has displaced 2 million Black people.

 

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