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 Vallarta Living | Art Talk | February 2007 
Art Show Highlights Africans in Mexico
 Latino Perspectives
This relatively unknown connection is explored in The African Presence in México: From Yanga to the Present, the most comprehensive project ever organized about Black contributions to Mexican culture. The exhibition features artists such as Rufino Tamayo and Francisco Mora, as well as Afro-Mexicano artists Ignacio Canela and Hermengildo González.
The exhibition examines a missing chapter in Mexican history that highlights African contributions over 500 years. The show will tour five museums in the U.S. and Mexico; it opens at the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque next month.
The history of Africans in the Americas is normally associated with the slave trade in the United States, the Caribbean, Central America, and South America. However, Mexico was also a port for slave ships and consequently had a large African population.
During the Spanish Colonial era, there were more Africans than Europeans in Mexico, according to Aguirre Beltran, author of the 1946 book The Black Population in Mexico. As the exhibition documents, Africans merged into the great racial mixture that is Mexico today.
"Because of race mixture, much of the African presence is no longer discernible, except in a few places such as Veracruz and the Costa Chica in Guerrero and Oaxaca," wrote Beltrán.
While Mexico was a conduit for the slave trade to the United States, history shows the people and government of Mexico disliked institutionalized slavery. The practice was completely banned within the Mexican republic by 1810.
By the year 1855, it was estimated that as many as 4,000 to 5,000 formerly enslaved Africans had escaped from the United States to Mexico. In 1857, the Mexican Congress adopted Article 13 of its constitution, declaring that an enslaved person was free the moment he set foot on Mexican soil.
These fascinating images make The Black Presence in Mexico worth the trip. For more information, visit www.nhccnm.org. |
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