Bobby Vaughn's Black Mexico -

Race and Nation: An Examination of Blackness in Mexico

Introduction and Problem Statement: Black Racial Identity in Mexico

This proposal explores understandings of racial categories and identities in the context of local, national, and global contexts. In 1992, when I began studying Afro-Mexicans of Mexico's Costa Chica -- the Pacific coastal region of Oaxaca and Guerrero --, I expected race consciousness to have begun to echo contemporary discourses of ethnic revindication and African diaspora. After all, like many other countries, African slaves became key to New Spain's productive enterprises after the decimation of indigenous populations in the 16th century (Aguirre Beltrán 1989 [1946]); Afro-Indian and Afro-Spanish mestizaje were central preoccupations of colonial New Spain (Harris 1964; León 1924); and Afro-Mexicans played key roles in both rank and file and leadership of the very movements hailed by Mexicans in establishing Independence (Booker 1993; Vincent 1994). Furthermore, throughout circum-Caribbean Latin America, from the Garifuna of Belize and the Sararmaka of the Guianas to black populations in Brazil, black people have drawn emergent consciousness of African diaspora into contemporary identities (Hanchard 1994; Mintz and Price 1976).

 Yet, to my surprise, I found that the notably Afro-Mexican populace of the Costa Chica does not identify as black in ways consistent with these other groups. These coastal farmers and fisherman, descendants of African maroons and slaves, were much more likely to consider themselves part of Mexico s mainstream gente de razón -- or civilized peoples in contradistinction to indigenous ethnic populations. What accounts for such silencing of blackness among Costa Chica Afro-Mexicans? And why might their experiences and identity contrast with those of Afro-Mexicans of Veracruz, as participating in the more expectable black identities with Caribbean and diasporic Afro-American overtones?

 I hypothesize that two cross-cutting factors account for these differences, and in particular for the "unmarked" character of Costa Chica Afro-Mexican consciousness. First, issues of race have been so colored by Mexico's preoccupation with "the Indian question" that the Afro- Mexican experience tends to blend almost invisibly into the background, even to Afro-Mexicans themselves. Mexico's official narratives -- as read through school texts and museum exhibits (García Canclini 1995) -- leave Afro-Mexicans outside of the national consciousness. These narratives are product of a two-pronged ideological framework I call indigenismo-mestizaje. Briefly, indigenismo-mestizaje is a complex national sentiment the first component of which is an understanding that the essence of Mexican-ness lies in its indigenous past -- principally, the high civilizatoins of the Aztec-Mexica and the Maya. In addition, the mestizaje component of this concept is the belief that contemporary Mexico is a kind of "perfect blend" of both Spanish and Indian heritages, and that this synthesis is at the heart of what it means to be Mexican.

 Second, in addition to the influences of indigenismo-mestizaje, it is my hypothesis that articulation with broader arenas of hemispheric and global communication differentiate the experience of Afro-Mexicans by region. The Costa Chica, no longer linked into currents of colonial or post-Independence maritime communication, and bypassed both by Mexico's post- Revolution national projects and by more recent transnational and neo-liberal developments, has afforded Afro-Mexicans little opportunity to articulate to "marked" black identities. Veracruz, by contrast, has been Mexico's gateway to the Caribbean and larger Atlantic world from the moment of Cortez's debarkation in 1519. Like peoples on the Caribbean seacoast of Spanish Central America -- such as Nicaragua's Miskito (Hale 1994) or Yucatán and Quintana Roo's Cruzob Maya (Sullivan 1989) -- who have resonated to Caribbean and Atlantic world, I hypothesize that Afro-Mexicans of Veracruz have experimented with identities alternative to those linked to Mexico's nationalism.

My project will explore both of these hypotheses, testing the first by examining Costa Chica Afro-Mexicans' understandings of blackness as an ongoing dialogue with national indigenista initiatives; and the second by comparing and contrasting the character of black consciousness in the Costa Chica with that of Veracruz.

 

THEORETICAL CONSIDERATIONS: Nationalism, Race, and Transnationalism

Three bodies of literature inform my study of Afro-Mexicans: theories of nationalism, critical race theory, and transnational theory. Afro-Mexicans find themselves at the intersection of these intellectual concerns. Indigenismo-mestizaje was certainly the product of an explicitly articulated nation-building project, and theoretical work on nationalism describes these processes (Anderson 1991; Balibar 1991; Mallon 1995) In studying the way this national project is understood by everyday people, I invoke the idea of discourse (Foucault 1972) to conceptualize how a top-down "ideology" (Althusser 1971), such as indigenismo-mestizaje, works itself out on the ground. To talk about indigenismo-mestizaje in the Costa Chica and Veracruz, then, is not a discussion about the "extent" to which an unadulterated nationalist ideology is successful, but rather, is a discussion about the very complexity inherent in the nature of the discourse (Comaroff and Comaroff 1993; Mallon 1995).

The second theoretical area, critical race theory, informs my interest in the self-definition of Mexico as a mestizo nation, and how Afro-Mexicans might be assimilated to such a definition. Critical race theory critiques and examines the ways racial categories are devised, who they include and exclude, and theorizes alternative visions of race (Lowe 1991). Mestizaje, examined from the standpoint of such studies, can be analyzed, to some extent, as yet another racial classification system that would describe social reality as much less complex than it really is. Understanding mestizaje as a narrative of national belonging (Balibar 1991) prompts me to question the ways that Afro-Mexicans might be written into (or out of ) such a narrative. It is my view, in light of this literature, that mestizaje ignores blackness to such an extent that it would make all blacks mestizos of some sort (Dzidzienyo 1995). If Mexico's national "self" is understood as mestizo, a contemplation of Afro-Mexicans, from the standpoint of critical theories of race, may provoke a reconceptualization of this national "self."

 My research is also interested in exploring how discourses of racial and national identity respond to new phenomena, such as greater international and transnational (Schiller, Basch, and Szanton-Blanc 1995) articulation. Recent work examining diaspora (Lake 1995; Rouse 1991; Van den Berghe 1976) seem to be helpful in thinking about an increasingly mobile Afro-Mexican population. Much of this literature examines what it means to live in, and constantly live out the influences of multiple nations, homelands, traditions, and increasingly dispersed family ties. Informants in the Costa Chica have told me that over the past ten years, increasing numbers of Afro-Mexicans are migrating to the United States (primarily to urban America), responding to deteriorating economic possibilities. As more Afro-Mexicans from the Costa Chica enter into dialogue with understandings of blackness quite different from those of indigenismo-mestizaje, it becomes increasingly important to examine their various experiences.

 

RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY  

Research Design

Black consciousness is the key dependent variable in my study. I will operationalize the concept of black consciousness through work in both the Costa Chica and in Veracruz to explore:
 

• the existence of race-based political or cultural movements in either region.
• the ways people use language to identify and classify themselves and others (i.e., who is black and who is not?).
• the ways people understand their history; whether or not such narratives reflect diasporic or other contemporary black identities in other parts of the world.
• the ways Afro-Mexicans react to racialized images in the media

My first principal hypothesis is that: a) black consciousness in the Costa Chica -- as well as in other parts of Mexico -- has been silenced by post-Revolution Mexican nationalism, with the centrality that it accords to "the Indian question" and to mestizaje's ironic preocupation with homogeneity.

 My second principal hypothesis is that: b) relative isolation from the contemporary currents of circum-Caribbean and Atlantic black consciousness also contributes to black consciousness's lack of salience in the Costa Chica. Here the key independent variable is insertion in the non-Mexican and increasingly transnational order and exposure to its contemporary discourses. By contrast to the Costa Chica, where black consciousness has had little such exposure, black consciousness in Veracruz will reflect contemporary diasporic black identities. A corollary is that, the extent that Afro-Mexican youth have begun to migrate in international and transnational labor circuits, there may be distinctively emergent black consciousness among Costa Chica youth that will contrast with that of older generations.

 The first hypothesis is in part born out by the literature on Afro-Mexicans, in which it is apparent that such populations in Mexico generally lack socially and politically salient black consciousness corresponding to similar populations on other Latin American and Caribbean landscapes where the Indian question is less central. I plan nonetheless to explore the hypothesis through ethnographic work in the Costa Chica, where Afro-Mexican populations are variously exposed to coastal Mixtec and other indigenous populations. This proximity to such indigenous populations also puts blacks in a position to react to, or at least take notice of, federal and state development programs that are pitched toward indigenous communities and populations.

 My work in the Costa Chica will center in the town of Collantes, Oaxaca, where I have already begun ethnographic work. In addition, I will undertake exploratory field work, surveys, and interviewing in a range of Costa Chica communities designed to sample the effects of close exposure to adjacent indigenous populations and to the official state-run programs and institutions pitched toward them.

In addition to in-depth participant observation ethnography in Collantes to explore Afro- Mexican lived experience, I will also inquire into whether and how Mexican national indigenismo-mestizaje relates to black consciousness and its relative lack of salience. I will focus on issues such as:
 

• regional museums, exhibits, and state-sponsored "cultural" institutions and programs, the extent to which these attend to Afro-Mexicans (if at all) as opposed to Mixtecs and other indigenous groups, and the opinions Afro-Mexicans have about them.
• regional primary and secondary school text books, and the extent to which they discuss the presence of indigenous people and Afro-Mexicans.
• the activities and programs of the National Indigenista Institute (INI) in and around the Afro-Mexican communities.
• the character of the interaction between indigenous people and their Afro-Mexican neighbors (i.e., what do they think about one another?)

 

While I will explore these issues centrally in the Costa Chica, I will also study them in Veracruz. My expectation is that both indigenismo-mestizaje and black consciousness are understood differently in Veracruz because of factors related to my second hypothesis, which sees such consciousness as dependent upon insertion in the increasingly transnational circum- Caribbean and Atlantic order. Thus, in the Costa Chica, but especially in Veracruz, I will examine such factors as:

 
 

• the historical and/or contemporary links to the Caribbean region, and especially, to Afro- Caribbean discourses of race.
• the extent to which either site (Costa Chica or Veracruz) has been integrated into or isolated from the mainstream national/international culture through the media.
• the regularity of supra-regional travel and international transmigration among Afro- Mexicans (and especially whether such migration of Costa Chica youth shapes their identities differently from elder generations).

 

I believe that Veracruz will prove to have a different insertion in the transnational order in part because of its circum-Caribbean location and in part because the Costa Chica, by contrast, is a relative backwater. I will explore the different insertions by collecting information, publications, and official economic and census materials illuminating:
 

• the general economic development of the two regions and how this might encourage or discourage active governmental indigenista initiatives.
• access to public education (formal) and a sense of the extent to which news from distant places (informal) has reached people, over the last generation or so.
• the extent to which urban/rural issues might be significant factors explaining contrasts between the two regions.

 

Research Methodology

The basic field method that I will use in this study is that of semi-structured interviews in both the Costa Chica and Veracruz, complemented by long-term participant observation in the Costa Chica community of Collantes. I have already established sufficient rapport with people in Collantes to be able to inquire about sensitive issues such as race.

 I plan to tape-record interviews and to organize transcripts and/or summaries into a database through the use of computer software. My intention is to collate information derived from interviews to facilitate on-going analysis while in the field such that the analysis can feed back into and strengthen my interviewing.

 For my work in Collantes, I also plan to carry out one survey/census project. This will be a household-based survey to establish the range of socio-economic variation in Collantes and to document whether, to what extent, and under what circumstances youth from Collantes have begun to enter transnational migration circuits. In addition to this data, I may use the survey to gather additional information about race and ethnicity. This census/survey project promises to be useful to myself and other researchers as baseline data for future research.

 Although my study is comparative in nature, I will not treat the Veracruz landscape with the same detail as I will treat the Costa Chica, which is my primary field site. What I am attempting here is the first step toward a trans-regional consideration of Afro-Mexican identity, and I will study Veracruz in sufficient detail so as to make a sound contrast to the Costa Chica. I plan to spend (not necessarily in this order) approximately 1 month in Mexico City carrying out documentary research; 7-8 months in the Costa Chica; and 3-4 months in Veracruz.

 

SIGNIFICANCE

My research, although centrally concerned with race, is not yet another study of racism focussing on racial inequality to the exclusion of the cultural dimensions of race -- the contested "meanings" or race within a complex cultural system (Winant 1992). While the dynamics or racism are important, my goal is to explore how the very idea of racism depends on how racial lines are constituted in regional, national, and transnational contexts.

 I believe I will be the first to compare ethnographically the distinct experiences of Afro- Mexicans in the Costa Chica and Veracruz. No one else has tried to analyze regionally varying Afro-Mexican experiences both historically and geographically in relation to Mexican nationalism and emergent transnationalism. At the same time, my research will undertake one of the first ethnographically grounded studies of a Costa Chica community since Gutierre Tibón's (1981 [1961]) study more than 35 years ago!

 My research attends to emergent and increasingly significant Afro-Mexican involvement in Mexico-US immigration and transmigration. While scholars have devoted considerable attention to indigenous peoples' ethnic consicousness in such migration (e.g. Kearney (1988), Nagengast (1990)), no one has recognized Afro-Mexicans as a singular component of the transmigrant labor stream. My work offers the opportunity for assessing how such transmigration may be reshaping Afro-Mexican consciousness and identity, not only in the Costa Chica, but throughout Mexico where populations of African origin are significant.

WORKS CITED

Aguirre Beltrán, Gonzalo
1989 [1946] La población negra de México: estudio etnohistórico. 15 vols. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica.

Althusser, Louis
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Anderson, Benedict
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Balibar, Etienne
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Booker, J.R.
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Dzidzienyo, Anani
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Hanchard, Michael George
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Kearney, Michael
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Rouse, Roger
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