From colonial subjects to post-colonial citizens? Considerations for a contemporary study of Black México

Abstract

The Mexican government is currently attempting to incorporate Black Mexicans into the national cultural landscape. However, the centring of whiteness through mestizaje limits the possibilities of Black inclusion by continuing to imagine the archetypal Mexican citizen as non-Black. Therefore, a colonial inheritance of racial value continues to frame how blackness can be constituted as part of the contemporary nation. This article argues that while the War for Independence may have allowed for the imagination of a new ‘Mexican’, a colonial racial economy continues to endure. This racial economy continues to limit the possibility of citizenship for African descendants in México.

Keywords:

• Mexico
• blackness in Mexico
• Afro-Latinos
• Afro-Mexicans
• subject making

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Official government rhetoric in Mexico refers to the nation as ‘pluricultural’. There is little rhetorical distinction or substantive difference between the terms ‘multicultural’ and ‘pluricultural’. The term multicultural is chosen here because it is more commonly used in scholarly works and popular language. In this case, the term multicultural is used simply to recognise that Mexico officially promotes the nation as being comprised of minority cultural groups each associated with particular cultural/geographic regions. The push for official Black recognition has included African descendants as one of these multicultural minority groups.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anthony Russell Jerry

Anthony Russell Jerry holds a PhD in anthropology from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. His primary research interests are in theorising the relationships between race and citizenship and investigating the influence of regional discourses of race and racism on citizenship practices and on overall access to citizenship. He has worked in the Costa Chica Region of Mexico for over 10 years. His work also explores the impacts of migration, immigration, racism and citizenship on first-generation youth and Black and Brown youth in the US/Mexico border region.