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<h1 class="entry-title">Mexico Officially Recognizes 1.38 Million
Afro-Mexicans in the National Census, as Black People Fight
Against Racism and Invisibility Throughout Latin America</h1>
<div class="post-info"><span class="date published time"
title="2015-12-14T10:16:11-05:00">December 14, 2015</span> |
Posted by <span class="author vcard"><span class="fn"><a
href="http://atlantablackstar.com/author/davidlove/"
title="David Love" rel="author">David Love</a></span></span>
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<a href="http://atlantablackstar.com/tag/mexico/" rel="tag"></a></span></div>
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<p><b><small><small><small><small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="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">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</a></small></small></small></small></b><br>
</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>The Mexico national census is now accounting for the 1.38 million
people of African ancestry, as the <em>Huffington Post</em>
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 <a
href="https://atlantablackstar.com/2015/12/04/6-interesting-facts-gaspar-yanga-revolt-1570/">Gaspar
Yanga</a>, 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.</p>
<p>As <em>Colorlines</em> 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.</p>
<p>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 <em>Quartz.</em></p>
<p>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 <em>VICE</em>
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 <em>Al
Jazeera,</em> a reflection of systemic racism, and a civil war
that has displaced 2 million Black people.</p>
<p>The <a
href="http://atlantablackstar.com/2014/04/15/5-acts-of-self-hate-and-racism-in-the-dominican-republic/">Dominican
Republic</a> 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.</p>
<p>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 <em>New
York Times.</em> 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 <em>News One,</em> 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>As <em>The Root</em> 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.</p>
<p>Through recognition and visibility, Afrodescendants will claim
their power in the countries in which they live.</p>
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