 |
|
|
 Editorials | July 2005 
In Mexico, `They Just Don't See Us'
 Hugh Dellios - Chicago Tribune
Cuajinicuilapa, Mexico - No one ever put Melquiades Dominguez's face on a postage stamp. Nor Juan Angel Serrano. Nor any other of the descendants of black slaves who live along Mexico's Costa Chica.
Nor did Mexico's blacks have much say when the federal government ignited a racially loaded scandal late last month by issuing stamps of a popular 1950s-era cartoon character that the Bush White House and Jesse Jackson declared an insulting stereotype.
The reappearance of Memin Pinguin, a caricature of a naive black boy with exaggerated lips, set off a tense exchange of criticisms between U.S. and Mexican leaders, just six weeks after President Vicente Fox angered civil rights activists by saying that Mexicans in the United States were doing jobs that "not even blacks want to do."
Though few bothered to ask, the reaction was passionate but mixed here on the steamy Pacific coast, where much of Mexico's small black population works the land and tries to preserve Afro-Mexican customs.
Some felt insulted. Others thought the whole scandal an unfortunate distraction from their far more serious challenge of overcoming poverty and a lack of recognition.
While Memin may be Mexico's most famous black face, the country's real blacks are nearly invisible to the wider population. Discrimination confronts them, they say, when police or airport officials insist they must be Cuban or Puerto Rican, question their credentials and make them sing the national anthem to prove their citizenship. Or when their children open a history textbook and find barely three paragraphs about there being black slaves in Mexico once upon a time.
"They just don't see us," said Serrano, 41, a Costa Chica cattle farmer who heads Black Mexico, a group trying to raise the black community's profile. "People ask us where we're from. They say we can't be from Mexico."
In a country proud of its mixed heritage and where the government for years officially denied the existence of discrimination, Mexico's blacks are not recognized as a separate ethnic group. They have no specific government programs addressing their needs; the country's many indigenous groups do.
Federal officials estimate that there could be 500,000 black Mexicans, concentrated in Guerrero, Oaxaca and Veracruz states. Community activists believe that number is far too low, that many Mexicans have some African roots and that even some 20th Century independence leaders were part black.
"Their invisibility is practically total," said Jose Luis Gutierrez, adjunct director general of the National Council to Prevent Discrimination. "And their situation is more serious than the indigenous communities. They are the poorest of the poor."
The struggle for recognition has become far more urgent in recent years as community leaders fear their culture's disappearance. A coastal highway built in the 1980s broke their isolation, and youths began leaving for the cities and the U.S. before learning much about who they were.
The other threat, activists say, is a stubborn belief among some blacks that they must intermarry to make their children less black.
"You still hear these kinds of things," said Sergio Penaloza, 51, a black teacher and activist. "People say it's better to hide your identity, and that we should try to `improve the race.'"
Working to raise pride
Penaloza and other community leaders have been working to raise blacks' pride. For nine years, they have held an "Encounter of Black Peoples" attended by people from the U.S. and elsewhere, and they opened a museum celebrating the local mixture of African and Mexican culture and history.
The Black Mexico organization has reached out to black groups outside the country and appealed for economic aid for small villages along the coast.
"We don't even recognize ourselves, and that's where the problem begins," Serrano said. "I'm convinced that when we all know where we come from, when we are not ashamed of our color, we will all be better off."
Others express concerns about the political motives of "black gringos" and other outside activists who have offered help. They want Mexico's blacks to develop their own identity, one that recognizes and values their mixed heritage.
"They come in and say, `Brother, we're going to rescue you,'" said Eduardo Anorve, 43, an activist and community chronicler. "They have their vision. We have our own."
According to oral history, the Costa Chica area was a disembarkation point for slaves after the Spanish conquest. The villages were mostly established by blacks who escaped and armed themselves to stay free.
Today, much of the community survives by raising cattle and growing melons and grains, or on money sent home by relatives in the U.S. Returning down the road, residents say, are youths who bring big-city gang customs; crime and drugs have become problems.
Dominguez, 82, narrates and sings for dances at the annual festivals in San Nicolas village in Costa Chica and leads efforts to preserve traditional customs. But these days it's only young women taking part.
"The young men don't concern themselves with this anymore," he said.
Residents say they face little discrimination within their own mixed communities. They encounter it, they say, in Mexico City or Acapulco.
Many here believe the recent controversies reflect an insensitivity and a tolerance of racist attitudes that run through Mexican society, most visibly in discrimination against the country's dark-skinned Indians.
Fox helped push an unprecedented anti-discrimination law through Congress in 2003. That has raised awareness, but a national survey in May indicated that few Mexicans understand the link between racism and "the loss of rights or opportunities," said Gutierrez of the National Council to Prevent Discrimination.
Fox and his aides vehemently deny that his remark and the postage stamps were racist. While Fox met with Jackson and Al Sharpton in Mexico City after his remark and said Mexico was interested in working with African-American leaders, he refused to publicly apologize.
Officials say protest foolish
Mexican officials rejected the protests over the stamps as foolish. They said the cartoon character stood for friendship and goodwill. The complaints, they said, reflected a misunderstanding of Mexican culture.
Because of the controversy, Mexican post offices were swamped with people trying to buy the stamps, issued as part of a series. Last week, a publisher reissued the Memin comic strip.
In Costa Chica, some blacks who had not seen the cartoon until the controversy were taken aback. The Black Mexico group wrote a scathing letter to Fox, saying the stamp "rewards, celebrates, typifies and makes official the distorted, mocking, stereotypical and limited vision of the black community."
Others, like Anorve, the chronicler, dismissed the controversy as trivial. But he said he hoped that it would help shine a spotlight on the dire needs of his people.
"We have 7,000 problems more important than these stamps," he said. |
| |
|
Vallarta Weddings
Tell a Friend
Site Map
Print this Page
Email Us