Why dont they mention Moors who fought in the Cinco De Mayo War? Home Site Index Synopsis 1 Synopsis 2 Synopsis 3 Synopsis 4 Synopsis 5 Synopsis 6 Africans Bible Warren G. Harding High Tech Jesus DNA a M Fu#$%& New White Race Beheaded Search Authors Notes Feedback Form Racial Amnesia—African Puerto Rico & Mexico By: Ted VincentEmporia State University professor publishes controversial Mexican history For 150 years, Mexican schoolchildren have learned that their heritage lies in the marriage of Spanish colonial culture and the conquered races of Native America. But if ESU assistant professor of Spanish Marco Polo Hernández Cuevas has his way, they’ll also begin to think of themselves as African. Hernández’s new book “African Mexicans and the Discourse on Modern Nation” published this month by University Press of America exposes how Mexican institutions have systematically erased “Africaness” from national memory. Between 55 and 85 percent of Mexicans can trace their family back to Africa, but cultural leaders have actively shunned this identity. “The knowledge of our ancestors has been erased through education,” he said. “Schools have omitted the fact that we had a large African population throughout the Colonial Period which lasted 300 years.” “It’s estimated that over 300,000 enslaved Africans were brought to Mexico during the colonial period, producing millions of offspring. Many of the major leaguers of the Mexican liberation movement were black themselves. The last two top commanders of the movement, José María Morelos and Vicente Guerrero, as well as a significant number of other leaders and troops have now been identified as mulattoes pardos. Even the Spanish conquistadors brought African heritage with them, as descendants of the Iberians and the Moors of northern Africa who occupied Spain during the medieval era, said Hernández. The modern Spanish language still contains over 4,000 Arabic words. “We are African on our Spanish side, and African on our African side,” he said. “We are ‘Neo-Africans’ just as much as we are Amerindian or European.” Hernández finds traces of African culture in many of Mexico’s national traditions – in its food, its music, its cultural icons and its national holidays. The Black Virgin -- a representation of Virgin Mary with dark skin common throughout Spain, France and Mexico – is one example of African cultural influences. Hernández also points out that the battle commemorated by the national holiday of Cinco de Mayo was fought by African Mexican “maroons.” His book describes how Mexican cultural leaders have rejected this African heritage, choosing instead to “whiten” Mexican literature, film and popular culture from 1920 to 1968, a period Hernández describes as the “cultural phase of the Mexican Revolution.” Hernández has gotten the attention of leading scholars in the field of African Latino studies. Richard L. Jackson, professor emeritus at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada writes in the book’s foreword that “his work will contribute greatly to the ongoing discussion of race in the Americans and particularly in Mexico where his research largely stands alone.” “The interdisciplinary approach he takes exemplifies the pervasive nature of the cult of whiteness and racism and their unfortunate byproducts in a nation that is far from white.” However, Hernández would like to see his academic research influence identity and behavior throughout general society. “Mexicans, Hispanics, Latinos and African Americans will recognize one another in our common African heritage and bridge the gap that divides us, he said. Before you read Mr. Vincent’s article you must know that the first civilization of ancient America was called Olmec. It was located along the Mexican Gulf Coast and began more than three thousand years ago. The most significant and widely acknowledged sculptural representations of African people in the Western Hemisphere (“New World”) were sculpted by the Olmecs. The Olmec developed the first civilization in the Americas. At least seventeen monumental basalt stone heads weighing ten to forty tons have been unearthed in Olmec sites along the Mexican Gulf Coast. One of the first European-American scientists to comment on the Olmec heads, archaeologist Mathew Stirling, described the Olmec heads facial features as “amazingly Negroid. In 1513, Balboa found a colony of Black men on his arrival in Darien, Panama. All of these facts, buttressed by skeletons and sculptures, make it clear that African people had a profound presence and influence in pre-Columbian America. They Came Before Columbus By: Ivan Van Sertima Olmec Head afromexico The border agent was bothering an immigrant, and the aggrieved party declared, “You can’t hassle me, I’m Puerto Rican.” The agent replied, “I don’t care what kind of Mexican you are. “ Puerto Rico and Mexico share the dubious honor of being the two Latin American nations that have been forced to send the largest numbers of their citizens to the racist exploitative United States. The light-hued immigrants from each country tend to have money and they pass into the North American mainstream rather easily, leaving the dark Puerto Rican and Mexican to work for starvation wages—and be hassled by “ la migra.” In cities of the mid-west where the two nationalities often share the same neighborhood, the dark Puerto Rican will make introductions with a Mexican neighbor saying, “I am Puerto Rican,” and the dark Mexican will respond, “and I am Mexican.” Neither African nor Indigenous roots will be mentioned. The national pride of the two neighbors cloaks difficulties in both Puerto Rico and Mexico in acknowledging non-white roots. Puerto Rico and Mexico took different paths to achieve their racial denial. Puerto Rico has denial in an essentially black-white two-race situation. A report in the 1560s said there were 15,000 black slaves and some 500 Spaniards on the island. As Jack D. Forbes has pointed out, Spanish head counts were always inaccurate. In this case, many of the “blacks” were mixed race children or grandchildren of the native Puerto Ricans, and a small handful of the latter still survived in 1560. Mexico has a three-race situation, counting the Indigenous, the whites and the descendants of the estimated 250,000 to 500,000 African slaves brought to colonial Mexico by the Spaniards. And Mexico has a four-race situation if one adds in the descendants of the estimated 100,000 Asian slaves brought to Mexico on the colonial Manila to Acapulco route. Since the law decreed that only Africans could be slaves, and the Spanish wanted more slaves, the Asians were declared Africans. Most were dark, having been captured in parts of Asia where people are dark complexioned, such as Malaysia, New Guinea, and the southern Philippine Islands, including the Island of Negroes, so named because the Negritos lived there. Puerto Rico gradually acquired white settlers in large numbers, and with consideration that Spanish census counts were inexact, we find that in 1827 in Puerto Rico the 159,527 African people (black and mixed), were only 49% of the total island population. A Spanish census made in Mexico in 1910 on the eve of its independence war showed 634,461 African people (real African and dark Asian). This was 10.2 % of the population. The native Mexicans were 60%, so-called whites were 18% and the rest mixed Indian and white. Racial amnesia over African roots is common in Latin America, and usually can be traced to the master slave relationship, which even after slavery is abolished leaves a belief among many dark complexioned Latin Americans that a successful life is one in which the children are lighter hued. Mexico puts an unusual twist on the Latin drift toward being white. In Mexico it is o. k. to stop at brown on the way to becoming white. Mexico calls itself “the cosmic race.” A hospital certificate given to parents of new-borns at a large Mexico City hospital says, “Congratulations on your addition to our bronze race.” Notes William Nelson in a 1997 study comparing racial attitudes of Mexico and Brazil, “Although Mexican culture has elements of racism, the concept of mestizaje - the idea of the goodness of being classed as racially mixed” is strong and contrasts sharply with Brazil, “where the population is increasingly collectively desirous of the white label... which points toward an ideal of being light rather than brown.” In all of Latin America, Mexico is the only country with a national culture. Everyone else has a folk culture. In Cuba and Brazil people get down with the folk through African culture. In Peru and Guatemala people get down with Indigenous culture. In Puerto Rico, there is the Le Lo Lai Festival of folks songs and dances that “showcase the European and Afro Antillean heritage of the island. “ Mexico has MEXICO! It has taken national culture to a higher level. It has its Indigenous “folk dances, “ but it has a commercialized hybrid pop culture on top. Mexico’s “high class” Ballet Company doesn’t do the Nutcracker. It is the Ballet Folklorico that raises, folk into high class “art. “ Mexican dance is women twirling in skirts of beautiful Indigenous color patterns to rhythms of Africa that are stomped out on a “tarima” sound box, that is adapted from the African sound box used by rhythmic dancers there. Mexico is “La Bamba,” which in beat and phrasing defies modern musicologists. This quintesenttial “Mexican” song and dance is too old for their analysis. It is dated to at least 1683 and historians show it was the creation of blacks in Veracruz who came from the town of MBamba in Angola, in that nation’s district of Bamba. Puerto Rico was held back in terms of cultural originality by the presence of a large white population that was happy with culture dictated from Europe. Mexico had a complex enough racial mix to create a new social synthesis. Africa
Posted on: Tue, 06 May 2014 02:32:28 +0000
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