Liz Barnett History December 14, 2011

Writing Within the Confines of the Nation State: Afro-Mexican1 Historiography in the Mexican Academy

The theme of race in Mexico represents a complicated issue due to the political and ideological ways in which racial identities have been excluded and included over the past century. Until the mid-20th century, the study of Mexicos black population did not form any distinct school of thought and few scholars studied the topic. This was due, in part, to the ideological and political movements that purposely made Afro-Mexican history invisible in the shadow of much more inclusive themes such as nationalism, development, etc. In essence, the scholarship on Afro-Mexicans within Mexico is directly correlated to the political development of the nation. Variances in the scholarship trends between scholars writing about Afro-Mexicans from within Mexico and scholars of Afro-Mexico from outside of Mexico furthers emphasizes the influence that Mexican political and national ideologies had on the trends and directions of scholarship on Afro-Mexico. In the Mexican Academy, Afro-Mexican historiography has been shaped and constrained by ideological and nationalistic agendas of the Nation State.
For the purpose of continuity throughout this paper I prefer to use the term Afro-Mexican when discussing people of African descent in Mexico. It should be noted that many of the authors of the texts cited below employ different terminology when discussing their subjects (i.e. Afromestizos, morenos, negros etc.)
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Following Mexican independence, the need to create a unifying national narrative and identity forced Mexican intellectuals to debate the worth and place of blacks in this national identity. Inspired at the time by the popular pseudo-scientific and Social Darwinist discourses that marked blacks as inferior and unable to progress; Mexican elites saw very little worth in including blacks in the nations composition. This same debate continued through the Revolutionary period and its aftermath. The Mexican elites placed a strong emphasis on the hybrid composition of the countrys population to demonstrate the strength of Mexicos national character following the Revolution. In the aftermath of the Mexican Revolution , the concept of mestizaje and the raza cosmica (cosmic race) helped to solidify the view that Mexicos indigenous and Spanish mixed-race origins are a valuable and crucial asset to Mexicos advancement.2 Through the two ideologies of mestizaje and indigenismo, Mexicos indigenous roots became the touchstone for important aspects of Mexican national identity. The belief in mestizaje challenged contemporary European notions that held that mixed people were inferior to pure races by instead highlighting the mestizo as the bridge to the future.3 These ideologies made blackness invisible, while emphasizing and making past Indian civilization and grandeur the forefront of Mexican pride. Thus, Indians were featured in nationalist ideologies and scholarly studies that glorified them, while generally disparaging or ignoring blacks in such discourse because of blacks historically unwanted status as slaves, and the most inferior class in society offered little potential to conjure national pride.4 This symbolic elevation of Mexicos indigenous people, accompanied by the simultaneous rejection of Mexicos African roots, is a constant theme in Jos Vasconcelos
David Branding, Los Orgenes del Nacionalismo Mexicano (Mxico City: Ediciones Era, 1980) 116-119. Jos Vasconcelos, The Latin-American Basis of Mexican Civilization, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1926) 83. 4 Peter Wade, Race and Ethnicity in Latin America, (Chicago: Pluto Press, 1997) 35-36.
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early-twentieth-century book, La Raza Csmica (The Cosmic Race). The ideas and ideals disseminated throughout The Cosmic Race represent the epitome of Mexican nationalistic racial discourse and national identity; one that bleaches out African presence and ethnic contributions to Mexicaness. Vasconcelos wrote his cosmic race hypothesis in direct response to the Eurocentric racism that proclaimed that the countries of Latin America are doomed to third world status, as they would never reach the same echelon of whiteness as Europeans. He envisioned the cosmic race as the fifth race which would result from the natural and voluntary mixing of the best traits from all races. In Vasconcelos' mind, this mixture would create a new race superior to all others.5 However, missing from Vasconcelos' vision of the cosmic race was the contributions of Mexicos black ancestors. It is clear from Vasconcelos' viewpoint that the black race represented the most primitive stage of human development. His commitment to bleaching out the inferior black race is evident when he remarks that in the Iberoamerican worldwe have very few blacks and the majority of them have been transformed already into mulatto populations.6 It was through intermarriage and natural selection that intellectuals such as Vasconcelos believed that the Amerindian roots could be improved by mixing with Spanish blood while the black man could be redeemed; and little by little, by voluntary extinction the ugliest types would give way to the more beautifulIn a few decades of eugenic aesthetics, blacks could disappear along with those types marked by beauty as fundamentally recessive [and therefore] unworthy of reproduction.7 Vasconcelos' ideology for mestizaje was focused on the eradication of what he saw as lower types of humans. This emphasis on the mestizo identity as the exclusive interweaving between whites and Indians
Jos Vasconcelos, La Raza Csmica: Misin de la Raza Iberoamericana (Barcelona, Agencia Mundial de Librera, 1958 6 Vasconcelos 25. 7 Vasconcelos 29-30.
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led to the negation of African influences in Mexican national identity, further justifying the stigmatization and diminishing of everything related to black identity. This ideology had a lasting effect on Afro-Mexican historiography as blacks were literally written out of the national narrative. The first academic studies of Afro-Mexicans were scripted in accordance with Mexicos national discourse of mestizaje. Writing in 1920, anthropologist Alfonso Toro is one of the first Mexican scholars to focus on Mexicos African past. Toro argued that understanding the AfroMexican past and its contributions was crucial if one was to understand the origins of the Mexican character. Using colonial sources, Toro demonstrated how the once bellicose black population in New Spain completely assimilated into Mexican society. Toro asserts that it was this black contribution that gave way to Mexican peoples inclination for revolt and revolution.8 Although Toros article to some extent valorizes blacks, it is still confined within the hegemonic discourse that consigns blackness to a distant past - a people that have disappeared in modern Mexico. Toro encouraged the popular assumption that Africans in Mexico were geographically circumscribed to the Veracruz region and were important primarily for their folk culture, music and dance. Although a small number of scholarly works existed on Afro-Mexicans in the 1920s and 1930s, it was not until the 1940s that Mexican anthropologist Gonzalo Aguiree Beltrn gave birth to the historical study of Afro-Mexicans after being encouraged to do so in 1942 by the director of the Governments Department of Demographics, Manuel Gamio. Although he is known as the father of Afro-Mexican studies, Aguirre Beltrn was heavily influence by previous smaller works focusing on Afro-Mexicans and did not write his pioneering study on AfroAlfonso Toro, Influencia de la raza negra en la formacin del pueblo mexicano, Ethnos. Revista para la vulgarizacin de Estudios Antropolgicos sobre Mxico y Centro Amrica, 1 (8-12), 1920-1, pp. 215-18.
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Mexicans in a vacuum. Previous demographic work by German Latorre in 1920 and Carlos Basauris 1943 ethnographic study of black Mexicans, both proved foundational to Aguiree Beltrns pioneer work.9 Taking a cue from revolutionary ideologies and discourses of mestizaje and racial assimilation, Aguiree Beltrns book, La poblacin negra, emphasizes assimilation and hybridity.10 The book represented the first conclusive historical work that highlighted, in great detail, the origins and the numbers of the slave trade, the rhythm of arrival and distribution of the slaves, the works sector of blacks, and the process of mestizaje that blacks were subjected to. Written within the ideological framework of the Mexican state, Aguiree Beltrn notes that following Mexican independence, the abolition of the colonial system of castes created the opportune environment for racial mixture. In juxtaposition with the United States history of slavery and the racial problems still at the forefront of United States society, Beltrns work supported the idealized idea that the institution of slavery and race relations in Mexico was benign in comparison to the United States. Although Aguiree Beltrns work was published in the same year as Frank Tannenbaums Slave and Citizen,11 which launched the comparative slavery school, Mexican scholars resisted this arena of research due to the strong tradition of regional history in the Mexican academy.12
Carlos Basauri, Breves notas etnogrficas sobre la poblacin negra del distrito Jamiltepec, Oaxaca (Mxico City, Fondo de Cultura Econmica, 1989); German Latorre, Relaciones geogrficas de Indias (contenidas en el Archivo de Indias de Sevilla. La Hispanoamrica del siglo XVI) Virreinato de Nueva Espana (Mexico Censos de poblacin), 4(4), 1920. 10 G. Aguirre Beltrn, La poblacin negra de Mxico. Estudio etnohistrico 3rd edn (Mxico City, Fondo de Cultura Econmica, 1989). 11 Frank Tannenbaum, Slave and Citizen: The Negro in the Americas (New York,Vintage Books, 1946). 12 Some of the early scholars whose research questions were in dialogue with some of the issues of the comparative slavery school that worked on Afro-Mexico after the internationalization of Afro-Mexican history are Patrick Carroll, Colin Palmer, Peter Boyd-Bowman, Edgar Love, David Davidson, Robert Brady, and William H. Dusenberry. See: P. J. Carroll, Estudio sociodemogrfico de personas de sangre negra en Jalapa, 1791, Historia Mexicana, 23 (1), 1973, pp. 11125; Carroll, Mandinga: The evolution of a Mexican runaway slave Community, 1735 1827, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 19 (4), 1977, pp. 488 505; C. A. Palmer, Slaves of the White God: Blacks in Mexico, 1570 1650 (Cambridge, Harvard University
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After studying under Melville Herskovits in the United States, Aguiree Beltrn finished his second work: an ethnographic study dedicated to the black populations in the Costa Chica town of Cuajinicuilapa (Cuaji) in the State of Guerrero.13 Although Beltrn challenges previous scholarship that implies the extinction of blacks in Mexico by acknowledging the existence of contemporary black communities in Mexico, he still uses their existence to argue his thesis about the integration of blacks and their mixtures into Mexican society. Due to Cuajis total geographic isolation (it was not until the late 1960s that the Pan-American Highway opened the area to ingress and egress), Aguiree Beltrn argues that the existence of a black population in this isolated area is a direct testament to the disappearance of a larger black population throughout all of Mexico due to the process mestizaje. He asserts that the process and success of integration has distinguished blacks from other subordinated indigenous groups. He shows how the cultural markers of blacks lacked sufficient distinction to serve as an instrument to identify them as a distinct ethnic group. According to Aguirre Beltrn, black racial markers disappeared quickly due to repetitive racial mixture. Aguirre Beltrns thesis of integration had such success that it blocked future studies about contemporary Afro-Mexican populations for many years. Due to his theory of integration and assimilation, Beltrns work marked Afro-Mexicans as condemned to disappear quickly. This notion led many Mexican scholars to view Afro-Mexican studies as unnecessary and irrelevant to the Mexican narrative. The sense of a deficit in the legitimacy of Afro-Mexican studies that Aguirre Beltrns
Press, 1976); P. Boyd-Bowman, Negro slaves in early colonial Mxico, The Americas, 26 (2), 1969, pp. 13451; E. F. Love, Legal restrictions on Afro-Indian relations in colonial Mexico, The Journal of Negro History, 4 (2), 1970, pp. 1319; Love, Marriage patterns of persons of African descent in a colonial Mexico City parish, Hispanic American Historical Review, 51 (1), 1971, pp. 7991; D. M. Davidson, Negro slave control and resistance in colonial Mexico, 15191650, Hispanic American Historical Review, 46 (3), 1966, pp. 23553; W. H. Dusenberry, Discriminatory aspects of legislation in colonial Mexico, The Journal of Negro History, 33 (3), 1948, pp. 284302. 13 Aguirre Beltrn, Cuijla: esbozo etnogrfico de un pueblo negro (Mxico: Fondo de Cultura Econmica, 1989 [1958]).

works generated weighed heavily upon the ethnographic scholarship produced in the Mexican academy. Since the 1950s, the majority of Mexican scholars had pursued similar research paths set forth by Aguirre Beltrn. In general, these scholars sought to understand how blackness could fit within the larger nationalistic discourse of mestizaje. Academics that followed Aguirre Beltrns example relied on the strong tradition of small-scale regional histories like Cuaji. 14 These works sought to explore the local contributions of Afro-Mexicans to regional societies. By doing so, the studies reemphasized the nationalistic belief that blackness was relatively insignificant to the larger Mexican national identity. The historical works produced by Mexican scholars in the second half of the 20th century were written in accordance with the national narrative that recognizes only an African past and not present. These authors utilize terminology that makes explicit reference to the afro-Mexican past. They maintain that the African subjects of the investigations are the enslaved others and are always distinctly separate from everyone else in society. These studies address the regional conditions of slavery,15 the types of lives of certain enslaved groups within society16 and religious beliefs (especially those dealing with the Inquisition).17 Such studies are a useful demonstration
Examples of such works include: F. Fernndez Repetto and G. N. Sierra, Una poblacin perdida en la memoria: Los negros de Yucatn (Merida, Universidad Autonoma de Yucatn, 1995); J. Andrade Torres, El comercio de esclavos en la provincia de Tabasco (siglos XVIXIX) (Villahermosa, Universidad Juarez Autnoma de Tabasco, 1994); M. G. Chvez Carbajal, Propietarios y esclavos negros en Michoacn (1600 1650) (Morelia, Universidad Michoacana de San Nicols de Hidalgo, 1994);R. Valdez Aguilar, Sinaloa: Negritud y Olvido (Culiacn, Talleres Grficos El Diario de Sinaloa,1993); M. L. Glvez Jimnez, Celaya: Sus races africanas (Guanajuato, Ediciones la Rana, 1995). 15 Adriana Naveda, Esclavos negros en las haciendas azucareras de Crdoba, Veracruz, 1690-1830 (Coleccin Historias Veracruzanas. Xalapa: Universidad Veracruzana 1987); Mara Guadalupe Chvez Carvajal, Negros y mulatos en Michoacn, en Tradicin e identidad, coordinado por Agustn Jacinto Zavala, y lvaro Ochoa Serrano (Zamora: El Colegio de Michoacn, 1995) 396-397; Mara Guevera, Participacin de los africanos en el desarrollo del Guanajuato colonial, En Presencia africana en Mxico, coordinado por Luz Mara Martnez (Mxico: CNCA, 1994) 133-198; Mara Luisa Herrera, Races africanas en la poblacin deTamaulipas, En Presencia africana en Mxico, coordinado por Luz Mara Martnez Montiel (Mxico: CNCA, 1994) 463-523. 16 See Mara Elisa Velzquez, Mujeres afromexicanas en la Nueva Espaa, (Veracruz: Instituto Veracruzano de Cultura, 1994). 17 Solange B. Alberro, Negros y mulatos: la integracin dolorosa. En Inquisicin y sociedad en Mxico,
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that within Mexico, the study of persons of African descent remains trapped in an intellectual framework that privileges slavery. The topic of agency is strikingly missing from most historic scholarship produced within Mexico. By acknowledging black agency, scholars would be challenging the overall power and influence of colonial and nationalist state-building structures. Black agency works against the generally accepted assimilationist narratives of Afro-Mexican history that are a part of the national narrative. Anthropologist Guillermo Bonfil Batalla created another impulse in the anthropological research of Afro-Mexicans in 1980 with the creation of the third root program, thus breaking from the framework put into motion by Aguirre Beltrn. This program, directed by Luz Maria Martinez, and funded by the Consejo National para la Cultura y las Artes, has the goal of recognizing the contributions of Afro-Mexicans to the national culture (dance, music, cooking, and oral literature). Mexican scholars such as Luz Martinez and Ochoa Serrano examine the lives of Afro-Mexican subjects and assess their influence on Mexican society and culture.18 Most of these studies rely upon specific, essentialist, and folkloric markers of what defines African origins. These studies tend to test for African identity by the presence and pertinence of specific predefined traits. This simplification of identity, through the auspices of cultural representation, created a very simplified and fragmented vision of black society and identity that, in reality, was much more complex.19 This characteristic in Mexican scholarship can be
1571-1700, (Mxico: Fondo de Cultura Econmica, 1998) 455-487; Guadalupe Castan, Punicin y rebelda de los negros en la Nueva Espaa en los siglos XVI y XVII (Mxico: Coleccin Sextante, Instituto Veracruzano de la Cultura, 2002). 18 Luz Maria Martinez Montiel, ed., Presencia Africana en Mxico (Mxico City, 1994); lvaro Ochoa Serrano, Mitote, Fandango y Mariacheros (Michoacan, Mxico, 1994); and Afrodescendientes sobre Piel Canela Zamora (Michoacan, Mxico, 1997). 19 See Sagrario Cruz Carretero, et al. El Carnaval en Yanga: notas y comentarios sobre una fiesta de la negritud (Mxico: Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, 1990); Cruz Carretero, Identidad en una comunidad afromestiza del centro de Veracruz: la poblacin de Mata Clara, Tesis de licenciatura. Mxico: Fundacin Universidad de las Amricas, 1989; Miguel Angel Gutirrez Avila, Corrido y violencia entre los afromestizos de la Costa Chica de Guerrero y Oaxaca (Mxico: Universidad Autnoma de Guerrero, 1988).

explained in part by the influence of state-sponsored research agendas, like the Third Root Program, which look for easy definitions and labels to constitute what is black identity. The dearth of innovative and new research trends from many scholars within Mexico is directly linked to manner in which nationalist hegemony has controlled historiographical priorities. As a result, this ideological influence has predetermined what is said about blackness and race in Mexico. A brief examination of the rich scholarship produced on Afro-Mexicans from scholars outside of Mexico, further reinforces the observation that Mexican scholarship on AfroMexicans is confined primarily within the framework of the nation-state. The greatest example of the divergence between Mexican scholarship and outside scholarship is in the failure of Mexican scholars to take the cultural and linguistic turns in historical analysis. In much of the outside scholarship, this cultural approach enhanced an understanding of the past that moves away from privileging conventional views of structure, power, and agency. These movements have encouraged scholars from outside Mexico to make richer and deeper use of documents and sources. Outside scholars prove to be more skeptical than Mexican scholars of fixed notions of identity, social relations, and cultural practices. R. Douglas Cope, Ben Vinson, Herman Bennett, Susan Kellogg, and Matthew Restall, are some of the scholars who emphasize the complexity and fluidity of the constructions (and re-constructions) of racialized and ethnic subjects. 20 Also, unlike historians from within Mexico who ignore the question of agency, historians from the
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See Norma Angelica Castillo Palma and Susan Kellogg, Conflict and Collaboration between AfroMexicans and Nahuas in Central Mexcio, in Beyond Black and Red, African-Native Relations in Colonial Latin America, ed. Matthew Restal (Albuquerque, NM, 2005), 115-136; Laura A Lewis, Hall of Mirrors: Power, Witchcraft, and Caste in Colonial Mexico (Durham: Duke UP, 2003) ; Herman L. Bennett, Absolutism, Christianity, and Afro-creole Consciousnsess, 15701640 (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2003); Ben Vinson III, Bearing Arms for His Majesty: The Free-Colored Militia in Colonial Mexico (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2001); R. Douglas Cope, The Limits of Racial Domination: Plebian Society in Colonial Mexico City, 1660-1720 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994).

United States are inclined to research the agency of Afro-Mexicans according to time, status, region, and context. Current historical work on the Afro-Mexican experience from scholars outside of Mexico is heading in a direction that is very different from those within Mexico. While slavery remains an important lens to study the black experience, scholars outside of Mexico are becoming more interested in the everyday forms of black resistance. These studies do not just focus on the tension between master and slave, but branch out to examine the relationships between freemen and the colonial institutions, slaves and religious authorities, and between the races themselves.21 The trends in Afro-Mexican scholarship seen outside of Mexico emphasize the effect that nationalistic constraints and ideologies has had upon the development and progression of AfroMexican historiography from within Mexico. Until Mexican intellectuals are able to separate the ideology of mestizaje and black assimilation and embrace the linguistic and cultural shifts in historic analysis, their scholarship will remain incompatible with international scholars.

In Bearing Arms for his Majesty, Ben Vinson shows how blacks overturned the disprivilege of the sistema de las casta through their participations in free black militias. Free black soldiers sought privilege within the broader Spanish society and they leveraged state and local officials to their advantage. In examining religious confraternities, Nicole von Germeten in Black Blood Brothers shows how urban blacks maneuvered through institutional mechanisms. Ben Vinson III, Bearing Arms for His Majesty: The Free-Colored Militia in Colonial Mexico (Sanford, Stanford University Press, 200; Nicole Von Germeten, Black Blood Brothers: Confraternities and Social Mobility for Afro-Mexicans (Gainesville, FL: University of Florida, 2006); as see: Herman L. Bennett, Africans in Colonial Mexico: Absolutism, Christianity, and Afro-Creole Consciousness, 1570-1640 (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2003).
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