Volume 30 (2011) - Cincinnati Romance Review

WRITING AFRICANS OUT OF THE RACIAL HIERARCHY
a means of ultimately eliminating them, and of “lightening” Mexico’s racial stock by
avoiding acknowledging the presence of people of African descent in Mexico’s
population and history.
This study consciously focuses on three individuals who at various times in their
lives worked for branches of the Mexican government (usually educational) and in some
cases even founded government institutions based on their ideas. Despite their antiimperialist,
nationalist mentalities, all three spent periods of time living in the United
States, often seeking refuge when their ideas fell out of favor with their own
government. Both their experiences in the U.S. and the influence of North Atlantic
ideas on their educations are significant for understanding each of these men’s
assertions about race, and particularly their decision to render invisible Afro-Mexicans
by writing them out of treatises on Mexico’s future. In contrast to the científicos who
worked during the Porfiriato, these 20th century Mexican intellectuals considered
themselves nationalists and intended their visions of the Mexican people’s future to
counter the white supremacist ideology supported by Social Darwinism and embraced
by U.S. intellectuals. Yet in ignoring the historical presence of Africans throughout
Mexican history, Mexican intellectuals reified the North Atlantic vision of a racial
hierarchy with Anglo-Europeans and Anglo-Americans at the top and Africans and
indigenous Americans at the bottom. Many recent scholars have pointed out the racism
inherent to the concept of mestizaje. 2 However, these critiques have focused on Mexican
intellectuals’ treatment of indigenous people. Emphasizing the exclusion of Africans
from the racial narratives underlines the nuances of Mexican racism in the first half of
the 20th century. It also suggests how firmly entrenched North Atlantic ideas about race
had become in Mexico by the 20th century.
Anti-African Sentiment
The history of Africans in Mexico spans as far back as the history of Europeans
there. Africans took part in the conquest of Mexico and were present throughout the
colonial period. Often they held significant intermediary roles as overseers, skilled
craftsmen, and merchants. Both free and enslaved Africans could be found in colonial
Mexico. As the colonial period progressed, Spaniards imported more African slaves to
work as unskilled laborers in the semi-tropical sugar-producing regions around
Veracruz, Acapulco, and parts of Guerrero and Oaxaca. Because more male than female
slaves were imported, interracial unions regularly occurred in the colonial period,
particularly between indigenous women and African men. As a result of the decline of
slavery combined with racial mixing, by the time of independence only a small portion
(2004).
2 In addition to the authors listed above, see Alan Knight (1990) and Marilyn Grace Miller
Cincinnati Romance Review 30 (Winter 2011): 172-183.
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