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As the first book-length examination of abolition and its legacies in Mexico, this collection reveals innovative social, cultural, political, and intellectual approaches to Afro-Mexican history. It complicates the long-standing belief that Afro-Mexicans were erased from the nation. The volume instead shows how they created their own archival legibility by continuing and modifying colonial-era forms of resistance, among other survival strategies. The essays document the lives and choices of Afro-descended peoples, both enslaved and free, over the course of two centuries, culminating during the Mexican Revolution of 1910. Contributors examine how Afro-Mexicans who lived under Spanish rule took advantage of colonial structures to self-advocate and form communities. Beginning with the war for independence and continuing after the abolition of slavery and caste in the 1820s, Afro-descended citizens responded to and, at times, resisted the claims of racial disappearance to shape both local and national politics.
List of contents
Chronology of key events in Afro-Mexican history; Introduction Nicole von Germeten and Theodore W. Cohen; Part I. Freedom and Colonial Legacies: 1. The limit of Afro-Mexico: archival abundance in a fragmented diaspora Joseph M. H. Clark; 2. 'Having never been set down in the register': Afrodescendant responses to tributary status in the late-eighteenth century Norah L. A. Gharala; 3. Power and belonging: the rise, fall, and erasure of José Antonio Martínez in Veracruz's early war for independence Alan Alexander Malfavon; 4. Mexico and the contested road to abolition: the case of Coahuila y Tejas 1821-1837 Beau D. J. Gaitors; Part II. (Un)Disappearing Black Mexico: 5. Historical memory about slavery, abolition, and Afro-descendants in the Mexican press, 1821-1860 Jorge E. Delgadillo Nunez; 6. The geography of race in Oaxaca's Costa Chica: Commodities, culture, and citizenship during Mexico's liberal economic transformation John Milstead; 7. Oilseed archives: Reading Afro-Mexico landscapes in plants and plantations Jayson Maurice Porter; 8. The pictorial limits of the nation: race, mestizaje, and the postrevolutionary national color line Deborah Cohen; 9. Reflections from the twentieth century: the nineteenth century's absence in the origins of Afro-Mexican studies Theodore W. Cohen; Index.
About the author
Theodore W. Cohen is an Associate Professor of Africana Studies and History at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. His book Finding Afro-Mexico: Race and Nation after the Revolution (2020) won the Howard F. Cline Book Prize in Mexican History from the Latin American Studies Association.Nicole von Germeten is Professor of History at Oregon State University. Her many publications include Death in Old Mexico: The 1789 Dongo Murders and How They Shaped the History of a Nation (2023).
