Guest Column
- By Congresswoman Diane E. Watson (CA-33rd)
The Mexican government re-stoked the flames of racial insensitivity by printing a series of postage stamps that celebrate a Sambo-like black child cartoon character known as Memin Pinguin. The stamps' debut follow on the heels of President Vincente Fox's controversial May 13 declaration that Mexican migrants are willing to fill jobs in the U.S. not even wanted by African-Americans.
The two incidents drew a volley of criticism from politicians and civil rights leaders north of the Rio Grande. Jesse Jackson traveled to Mexico to meet with Fox. On the heels of Jackson, Reverend Al Sharpton extended an invitation to the President to meet with him in Harlem, which Fox reportedly accepted. More recently, the Congressional Black Caucus sent a letter to Fox demanding that he withdraw the racially offensive stamps.
Slow on the uptake, President Fox and many of his countrymen continue to express surprise at the outrage. But in some American eyes, the stamps and Fox's statement conjure up the stigma of race and class in Latin America.
The two incidents also suggest current day Mexico's ignorance of the role that Mexicans of African descent played in Mexican history and the development of its vast northern territories, stretching from California to New Mexico. Their experience stands in stark contrast to today's African-Mexicans who are subjected to widespread social discrimination and economic privation.
A number of factors worked in favor of the upward mobility of early African-Mexican settlers. Mexican independence in the early 19th Century and the rise of republicanism made it easier for persons of African ancestry to secure land titles, grants, and higher military rank. The traditional caste system based on skin color and European ancestry lost some of its edge in the rough and tumble of frontier life.
The sizeable presence of mixed blooded Africans in Mexico and the territories - who held the balance of power between the Spanish and Creole populations - also helped to grease the wheels of social and economic mobility. Out of this ferment emerged a number of African-Mexicans of accomplishment and rising social pedigree.
The success of the Tapia and Pico families, both of African-Mexican origin, admirably illustrates the point. Born in 1789, Tiburcio Tapia entered the military as a young man. He later became a successful merchant and served in the provincial legislature and twice as the mayor of Los Angeles. The Picos took a similar route and are said to have achieved the greatest success and social prominence of any family of part-African descent. In 1845, Pio Pico became Governor of California and a year later presided over the territory when it was overrun by the United States during the U.S.-Mexican War.
The era of relative racial harmony in California and elsewhere in the northern territories came to an abrupt end at the conclusion of the Mexican War. Under the terms of the1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Mexico ceded California and its northern territories to the United States. In 1849, delegates to the California state convention voted to disenfranchise Native Americans, Mexicans, and African descendants.
The U.S.-Mexican War, whose outcome signaled the end to racial tolerance in California and to the southern states the westward expansion of slavery, has been characterized as a dress rehearsal for the Civil War, our nation's ultimate showdown over the slavery issue. Ulysses Grant, who participated in the Mexican War and later led the Army of the Potomac, never approved of his country's blatant land grab, characterizing it as a sordid affair tailor-made by pro-slavery interests. More than a century and a half later, the loss of the northern territories still weighs heavily on the Mexican national psyche.
President Fox need not visit Harlem to seek atonement for his remarks and the actions of his government. Better yet, he should summon the ancestral spirits of his countrymen - Pico; Tapia; President Vincente Guerreo, mexico's second Presidet, who was racially mixed; and the thousands of other African-Mexicans whose blood has blended into the larger Mexican population. He should embrace and celebrate the incipient spirit of inclusion and diversity that for a too-brief period germinated in Mexico and its northern territories.
And for those of us north of the border, the history of blacks in Mexico should be an object lesson of the resiliency of the human spirit and the fact that people will always migrate to areas where they believe their condition and that of their progeny will improve.
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