LET US REVIVE THE ERA OF THE BLACK MEXICAN MILITANTS: WHY MUST MEXICO
FIGHT AGAINST THE COUNTRY'S RACISM (AS SEEN IN CHIAPAS AND ON TELEVISA)
ONLY VIA INDIGENOUS GRUP IDENTITY. LET US RETURN TO THE "RAINBOW
COALITION" OF ALL DARK MEXICO . part of that story follows
Mexico had a period when the then 10% of the population with AFrican
roots played a self-consciously liberal and progressive role in national
politics.
From the beginning of the 1810 war for independence to 1855 when the
Afro-Mestizo General Juan Alvarez became president and brought Benito
Juarez to Mexico City, porogressive Mexico consisted of a "rainbow
coalition" which historians say was led by "mestizos." But to be
precise, the leaders and the most militant groups of followers were
"Afro-Mestizos."
In the 1810-1821independence war chaos and social disintegration
frightened away the initial support the fight had from White Mexico. Many
indigenous peoples sat out the war while wishing a pox on both sides.
Effective leadership at the grass roots level fell to the Afro-Mestizo
Jose Maria Morelos, and after his death to the Afro-Mestizo Vicente
Guerrero. A corrolation of ethnic composition of areas and where the
freedom fighters were strong shows a remarkable tie with Afro-Mexico (a
group inspired to fight by being the only group subject to slavery and to
other oppressions special for Africans). At war's end Guerrero had
earned the lable "the Washington" of Mexico for having held the army
together at a time as hard as had George at Valley Forge.
Eight years after the war Guerrero was President. The country's first
ofa number of Afro-Mestizo presidents then ended slavery, thus becoming
his country's "Lincoln" as well as "Washington."
Guerrero only became president because of riots and rebellions led by
militants of AFrican heritage. An Afro-Mexican colonel and general in
the Capital, the "cacique" of Southern Jalisco the Afro-Mexican Guzman,
the political theorist of "Federalism" and colonel Codallos, a black from
Trinidad who took the Bajio for Guerrero, and the Pacific coast, much of
Morelos and Oaxaca was taken by a collection of mostly Afro-Mexican
commanders, including Alvarez and the Afro-Filipino-Indios Montesdeoca
and Mongoy, along with the white Santa Anna - who at that time led an
army collected among the people behind Vera Cruz, an area where half the
population had African heritage.
Over decades the black composition of the rainbow coalition was
downplayed to the point where no one mentioned it, as the Afri-Mexican
tie is hardly mentioned in the enormous voluminous (50 pound) history of
Mexico written by Guerrero's grandson, Vicente Riva Palacio, who's dad
had been the militantly pro-Guerrero head of the Mexico City city council
in 1828 during the turmoil that put Vicente's granddad in the Presidency.
It is time to see once more that Mexico's dark skinned majoirty that
is oppressed by the sell outs to the IMF, that is by a light skinned
elite,could much improve their prospects if the struggle went beyond just
indigenous rights to include the campesinos in many areas where pure
indian culture is barely present but where the dark who are the mix ofthe
millions of indians of 1519 and the 500,000 imported African slaves, and
the 60,000 imported Filipino slaves, and the occasional mix with white,
are a group deserving and needing focus and identity.
Morelos, Guerrero and Alvarez and company said this group was the
true Mexican, the people who were certainly "more Mexican" than the ever
present light skinned elite that looks to European and US capital and
culture.
Viva Zapata (who came from a town with a black majority back at 1810)
And while on the subject, check out the Flores Magon family. Great bunch
of later-day Afro-Mexican militants, as is obvious from some of their
photos, and as the grandfather of Afro-Mexican studies (Gonzalo Aguirre
Beltran) says, "Their hair, their complexion and the fact that they were
far too tall to be true indigenous has always led me to see the family as
Afro-Mestizo).
Before working on LA POBLACION NEGRA DE MEXICO (now in 5th edition)
Aguirre Beltran wrote an anthology of Flores Magon works.
If this posting gets response more details will be forthcoming. For
footnotes and details see forthcoming article in Spring 1995 JOURNAL OF
NEGRO HISTORY,. where this writer's "The Blacks Who Freed Mexico" is
combined with another article to make the issue a special one dedicated
to BLlack Mexico.
also - requests for more data via EMAIL are welcome, and any school
inthe northern california and Reno nevada area can have a talk, with
plenty of pictures. I am free Th&Fr in April, and Th-Fr-Sat in May.