[News] Mexico Officially Recognizes 1.38 Million Afro-Mexicans in the National Census, as Black People Fight Against Racism and Invisibility Throughout Latin America

[Anti-Imperialist News]

  Mexico Officially Recognizes 1.38 Million Afro-Mexicans in the
  National Census, as Black People Fight Against Racism and Invisibility
  Throughout Latin America

December 14, 2015 | Posted by David Love 
<http://atlantablackstar.com/author/davidlove/>
<http://atlantablackstar.com/tag/mexico/>

*http://atlantablackstar.com/2015/12/14/mexico-officially-recognizes-1-38-million-afro-mexicans-in-the-national-census-as-black-people-fight-against-racism-and-invisibility-throughout-latin-america/?utm_content=buffer9eb60&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer*

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 the /Huffington 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 
<https://atlantablackstar.com/2015/12/04/6-interesting-facts-gaspar-yanga-revolt-1570/>, 
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.

The Dominican Republic 
<http://atlantablackstar.com/2014/04/15/5-acts-of-self-hate-and-racism-in-the-dominican-republic/> 
is a nation of Afrodescendant people which has whitened its history, and 
has come to view blackness as a trait of its neighbor Haiti, the nation 
that once controlled them.  The Dominican Republic’s racism against 
dark-skinned people, including Haitians, is reflected in their 
citizenship policies. This includes a ruling which effectively revoked 
the citizenship of 200,000 so-called “undocumented” people, with a 
threat of their expulsion from the country.  They are primarily those 
born to Haitian immigrants, many of whom are multigenerational and only 
speak Spanish.

In Brazil, the last nation in the Americas to abolish slavery, racism 
against Black people continues.  With the largest African descended 
population outside of the African continent—and second only to 
Nigeria–there are approximately 106 million Afro Brazilians, or 53 
percent of the population, according to the /New York Times./  According 
to UNICEF, Black Brazilian children ages 12 to 18 are three times more 
likely to get killed than whites, in a nation where Blacks are 68 
percent of all homicide victims, and 62 percent of all prisoners. 
  Further, Blacks are more likely to be killed by police, and are more 
likely to live in poverty, Blacks comprising 70 percent of those in 
extreme poverty.  According to /News One,/ not a single company on 
Brazil’s stock exchange has a Black CEO, in a nation which is majority 
Afrodescendant.  Further, a survey conducted by the IBGE research 
institute fund that Black and mixed-race Brazilians earn half of what 
their white counterparts make.

Meanwhile, Black people in Latin America are making efforts for 
recognition.  A legacy of slavery has resulted in around 150 million 
people of African ancestry in the region, which amounts to 30 percent of 
the population, according to the United Nations.

On December 4 and 5, the Afro-Latin American Research Institute at 
Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African & African American 
Research hosted a symposium on the Afrodescendant movement in Latin 
America. Entitled “Afrodescendants: Fifteen Years after Santiago. 
Achievements and Challenges,” the conference took place on the 15th 
anniversary of the adoption of the term ‘Afrodescendants’ by the Latin 
American Regional Conference Against Racism in Santiago de Chile in 
2000.  The meeting of activists, academics and agency officials examined 
the achievements and obstacles facing this movement in creating 
anti-racist policies in Latin America.

As /The Root/ reported, a number of Latin American countries have pushed 
for constitutional measures to address racial discrimination, 
acknowledge minority groups and their cultural and territorial rights, 
with 18 countries having government agencies to enforce 
anti-discrimination laws.  However, representatives from Uruguay, Costa 
Rica and Bolivia noted that these governmental anti-discrimination 
agencies are under-resourced and ineffective, and fail to address the 
needs and challenges of Afro communities.  Structural racism is an issue 
in countries such as Bolivia, preventing Black people from enjoying the 
full benefits of citizenship.  Further, while the Afrodescendant 
movement is present in nearly every Latin American nation, people of 
African descent remain invisible, often sidelined by their governments 
and by international bodies in the formulation of policy.

Through recognition and visibility, Afrodescendants will claim their 
power in the countries in which they live.

-- 
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