Blackness and mestizaje in Mexico and Central America Elisabeth Cunin, Odile Hoffmann To cite this version: Elisabeth Cunin, Odile Hoffmann. Blackness and mestizaje in Mexico and Central America. Elisabeth Cunin, Odile Hoffmann. France. AfricaWorld Press, 220p, 2013. hal-01287674 HAL Id: hal-01287674 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01287674 Submitted on 24 Mar 2016 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Blackness and mestizaje in Mexico and Central America The Harriet Tubman Series on the African Diaspora Paul E. Lovejoy and Toyin Falola, eds., Pawnship, Slavery and Colonialism in Africa, 2003. Donald G. Simpson, Under the North Star: Black Communities in Upper Canada before Confederation (1867), 2005. Paul E. Lovejoy, Slavery, Commerce and Production in West Africa: Slave Society in the Sokoto Caliphate, 2005. José C. Curto and Renée Soulodre-La France, eds., Africa and the Americas: Inter- connections during the Slave Trade, 2005. Paul E. Lovejoy, Ecology and Ethnography of Muslim Trade in West Africa, 2005. Naana Opoku-Agyemang, Paul E. Lovejoy and David Trotman, eds., Africa and Trans-Atlantic Memories: Literary and Aesthetic Manifestations of Diaspora and History, 2008. Boubacar Barry, Livio Sansone, and Elisée Soumonni, eds., Africa, Brazil, and the Construction of Trans-Atlantic Black Identities, 2008. Behnaz Asl Mirzai, Ismael Musah Montana, and Paul E. Lovejoy, eds., Slavery, Islam and Diaspora, 2009. Carolyn Brown and Paul E. Lovejoy, eds., Repercussions of the Atlantic Slave Trade: The Interior of the Bight of Biafra and the African Diaspora, 2010. Ute Röschenthaler, Purchasing Culture in the Cross River Region of Cameroon and Nigeria, 2011. Ana Lucia Araujo, Mariana P. Candido and Paul E. Lovejoy, eds., Crossing Memories: Slavery and African Diaspora, 2011. Edmund Abaka, House of Slaves and “Door of No Return”: Gold Coast Castles and Forts of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 2012. Christopher Innes, Annabel Rutherford, and Brigitte Bogar, eds. Carnival: Theory and Practice, 2012. Paul E. Lovejoy and Benjamin P. Bowser, The Transatlantic Slave Trade and Slavery, 2012. Dorsía Smith Silva and Simone A. James Alexander, Feminist and Critical Per- spectives on Caribbean Mothering, 2013. Hakim Adi, Pan-Africanism and Communism: The Communist International, Africa and the Diaspora, 1919-1939, 2013. Elisabeth Cunin and Odile Hoffmann, Blackness and Mestizaje in Mexico and Central America, 2013. Blackness and Mestizaje in Mexico and Central America xxxxyxxxx Edited by Elisabeth Cunin and Odile Hoffmann AFRICA WORLD PRESS Trenton | London | Cape Town | Nairobi | Addis Ababa | Asmara | Ibadan | New Delhi AFRICA WORLD PRESS 541 West Ingham Avenue | Suite B Trenton, New Jersey 08638 Copyright © 2013 Elisabeth Cunin and Odile Hoffmann First Printing 2013 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publisher. Book and Cover design: Saverance Publishing Services Cover photo: Manuel González de la Parra Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Blackness and mestizaje in Mexico and Central America / edited by Elisabeth Cunin and Odile Hoffmann. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-59221-932-2 (hard cover) -- ISBN 978-1-59221-933-9 (paperback) 1. Blacks--Race identity--Mexico. 2. Blacks--Race iden- tity--Central America. 3. Mestizaje--Mexico. 4. Mestizaje--Central America. 5. Multiculturalism--Mexico. 6. Multiculturalism--Central America. 7. Mexico--Race relations. 8. Central America--Race rela- tions. I. Cunin, Elisabeth, 1971- II. Hoffmann, Odile. F1392.B55B56 2013 305.800972--dc23 2013000812 Table of Contents Tables vii Acknowledgements ix Introduction to Blackness and mestizaje in Mexico and Central America xi Elisabeth Cunin and Odile Hoffmann 1 | Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and Mestizo Costeños: Limited Inclusion in the Autonomy Regime of Nicaragua 1 Miguel González 2 | Incarnation of the National Identity or Ethnic Affir- mation? Creoles of Belize 35 Elisabeth Cunin 3 | Genesis of Transnational Networks: Afro-Latin American Movements in Central America 59 Carlos Agudelo 4 | The Renaissance of Afro-Mexican Studies 81 Odile Hoffmann 5 | An Ethno-Political Trend on the Costa Chica, Mexico 117 (1980-2000) Gloria Lara 6 | Mestizaje and Ethnicity in the City of Veracruz, Mexico 139 Christian Rinaudo Blackness and mestizaje in Mexico and Central America 7 | Transnational Networks and re-Africanization of the Santería in Mexico City 165 Nahayeilli Juárez Huet Notes on Contributors 191 Index 195 vi Tables Table 1.1: North Atlantic Autonomous Region (RAAN): Political and Ethnic Distribution of Seats Regional Autonomous Council, 1990 - 2014 9 Table 1.2: South Atlantic Autonomous Region (RAAS): Political and Ethnic Distribution of Seats Regional Autonomous Council, 1990 - 2010 10 Table 1.3: North Atlantic Autonomous Region (RAAN): Elected women, ethnicity, and political parties, 1990- 2014 11 Table 1.4: South Atlantic Autonomous Region (RAAS): Elected women, ethnicity, and political parties, 1990- 2010 11 Table 3.1: Presence of leaders in International meetings (based on 35 meetings between 1992 and 2005) 77 Table 5.1: Social actors that participate in theconstruc- tion of being “black” on the Costa Chica 133 Acknowledgements his book offers a sample of a larger work, which consists of four volumes published in Mexico in 2010-2011, dedicated toT people of African descent and their roles and places in Latin American societies of yesterday and today. It is a collective effort undertaken within the framework of two international research programs, AFRODESC “People of African Descent and Slaver- ies: Domination, Identification and Heritages in the Americas (15th - 21st centuries)” (ANR-Suds AIRD AFRODESC 07-SUDS- 008) and EURESCL-WP4 “Slave Trade, Slavery, Abolitions and their Legacies in European Histories and Identities” (7th PCRD European Program) and involving several institutions, includ- ing CEMCA, CIESAS, INAH and UNAM in Mexico; and the IRD, the University of Paris Diderot and the University of Nice in France. These books are the result of a dialogue between scientists from Mexico, Central America, Europe, and North America in the Congress, “Diaspora, nation and difference. Populations of African origin in Mexico and Central America,” held in Ver- acruz, Mexico, in 2008. The event proposed contextualized and politicized interpretations of the “black question” in the region and laid the foundations for a theoretical, methodological, political and ethical renewal in order to understand the ethnic and cultural diversity of Latin American societies and the dif- ficulties they face to confront persistent inequality and racism. We decided to include another text devoted to Afro-Mexi- can studies although it was published in other languages some Blackness and mestizaje in Mexico and Central America years ago (Hoffmann 2005, 2006), since the broad lines of analy- sis and the contributions remain valid. México, Elisabeth Cunin and Odile Hoffmann x Introduction Elisabeth Cunin and Odile Hoffmann xyx n the last decades of the twentieth century there were many attempts in the Americas to establish new “national agree- ments,”I enshrined in reformed constitutions to include the principles of recognition of difference and respect for traditions and customs specific to certain sectors of the population. Mul- ticulturalism entered into the discursive practices and the laws and regulations of various countries. For indigenous groups organized since the 1970s, this period definitively marked a break to the extent that it legitimized their struggles and demands for special treatment as autochthonous people and made them interlocutors with states and governments, now obliged to negotiate with them the sharing of certain resources and some reforms (Sieder 2002). Be it as “peoples,” “nations,” or “ethnic groups,” indigenous people gained bargaining power in their respective countries and in international arenas, but they did not necessarily achieve material benefits or definitive policies (for an analysis of empirical cases in a comparative perspective between Mexico and Colombia, see Hoffmann and Rodríguez 2007). The different “regimes of multicultural citi- zenship” included, with specific social logic, Afro-descendants in different degrees or forms, especially after the international conference in Durban in 2001. Indeed, in the same period and in articulation with the indigenous sector, the black movement began to emerge as a visible force in Latin America. However, unlike the earlier indig- Blackness and mestizaje in Mexico and Central America enous movements, it did not enjoy a legitimizing discourse in the international arena as an “autochthonous” or “indigenous” group. It began to grow, then, in a very disperse form around localized demonstrations based as appropriate on the fight against discrimination and