Negros-Afromexicanos: Recognition and the Politics of Identity in Contemporary Mexico by Talia Weltman-Cisneros Department of Classical & Modern Languages, Literatures, & Cultures Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan
[email protected] & Candelaria Donají Méndez Tello Universidad Autónoma de Guerrero, Facultad de Turismo Zihuatanejo, Guerrero, México
[email protected] Llegaremos en América, antes que en parte alguna del globo, a la creación de una raza hecha con el tesoro de todas las anteriores, a la raza final, la raza cósmica (We in America shall arrive, before any other part of the world, at the creation of a new race fashioned out of the treasures of all the previous ones: The final race, the cosmic race) -José Vasconcelos ¿Cuál es mi cultura, mi raza, mi destino?” (What is my culture, my race, my destiny?) -Manuel Zapata Olivella 140 The Journal of Pan African Studies , vol.6, no.1, July 2013 Abstract Afro-Mexican communities in the Costa Chica region have forged strategic organizations, programs, and initiatives in order to combat the historical silence and discrimination of their presence and contributions in Mexico. This paper presents a transnational communication and theorization of current events and activities with goals that range from the articulation and selection of ethno-racial terminology, to the dissemination of cultural identifiers, and the constitutional recognition of Afro-Mexicans. It also discusses projects and programs such as the Encuentro de los Pueblos Negros (Meeting of the Black Communities) in Oaxaca and Guerrero, and the association México Negro, A.C., in order to illustrate how community-based projects contribute to a reification of afromexicanidad or Afro-Mexican-ness as a dynamic and pluri- versal construction of being and of blackness.