[LINK] "Black Minority Invisible in Bicentennial Plans"

[rfmcdonald]

Although Mexico and Argentina have vastly different population histories, Emilio Godoy suggests in his recent Inter Press Service article that black Mexicans have been just as quietly obscured, as ancestors and as a real-life population, as their Argentine counterparts.

Given the significant decline in the native population as a result of the Spanish Conquista and diseases brought by the European invaders, the Spanish colonialists began importing slaves from Africa in the 16th century.

Historians estimate that between 1580 and 1650, some 250,000 African slaves were brought to Mexico, mainly through the port of Veracruz, to work in the sugarcane fields and on cattle ranches.

"There was a very strong African presence," María Velásquez from the National Institute of Anthropology and History told IPS. "All of those stories that have been handed down in different parts of Mexico (reflecting the influx of Africans) should be made known."

Based on early census data, Mexican anthropologist Gonzalo Aguirre Beltrán estimates that the black population in colonial Mexico numbered around 20,500 in 1570, 35,000 in 1646, and nearly 16,000 in 1742.

In other words, according to U.S. anthropologist Bobby Vaughn, blacks far outnumbered the Spanish in early colonial times, with the black population three times that of the Spanish in 1570 and 2.5 times in 1646.

Vaughn, who specialises in studies on Afro-Mexicans, says that not until 1810 did the Spanish outnumber blacks.

Mexicans of African descent had to wait over two centuries to be free of slavery, although before Roman Catholic priests Miguel Hidalgo and José María Morelos, two of the country's national heroes, abolished slavery in 1810, slaves had already made several attempts at winning freedom.