*Before reading Chocolate and Corn Flour, I did not know that there was such a thing as a “Black” Mexico.
Having lived in Tijuana, Mexico for a number of years and visited a number of Mexican cities, such as Cancun and Rosarito Beach, this book comes as a revelation to me.
Laura A. Lewis, Professor of Anthropology at James Madison University, and the author of Hall of Mirrors: Power, Witchcraft, and Caste in Colonial Mexico, has written a scholarly and thought provoking book about the history and culture of Mexico; Chocolate and Corn Flour: History, Race, and Place in the Making of “Black” Mexico.
Located on Mexico’s Pacific coast in a historically black part of the Costa Chico region, the town of San Nicolas has been identified as a center of Afromexican culture by Mexican cultural authorities, journalists, activists, and foreign anthropologists. The majority of the town’s residents, however, call themselves morenos (black Indians). In Chocolate and Corn Flour, the author explores the history and contemporary culture of San Nicolas, focusing on the ways that local inhabitants experience and understand race, blackness, and indigeneity, as well as on the cultural values that outsiders place on the community and its residents.
Drawing on more than a decade of fieldwork, Lewis offers a richly detailed and subtle ethnography of the lives and stories of the people of San Nicolas, including community residents who have migrated to the United States. San Nicoladenses, she finds, have complex attitudes toward blackness – as a way of identifying themselves and as a racial and cultural category. They neither consider themselves part of an African diaspora nor deny their heritage. Rather, they acknowledge their hybridity and choose to identify most deeply with their community. The author points out in her book that the ancestors of most San Nicoladenses were African and African-descent slaves and free persons, referred to as blacks (negros) and mulattoes (mulatos) in colonial texts. She further indicates that because of demographics and social interactions between blacks and Indians, mulattoes in colonial Mexico were frequently of black and Indian descent (Motta 2oo6: 121; also Lewis 2003: 74 – 78). Mexico’s history of slavery – in full force for about 150 years – has been amply documented, according to Lewis, but she highlights a few points in Chololate and Corn Flour, both general and specific. Lewis states that until 1700, with the de facto end of the Mexican slave trade, Mexico hosted one of the largest black and mulatto populations in the Americas. She says that Spaniards brought slaves directly from West and Central Africa during this period, but they also brought some to Spain to Hispanicize and Christianize them before transport to the New World.
A picture of a La Cuculusta (The Kinky-Haired Girl) that Cuaji culture workers produced for the First Traditional fair in San Nicolas in 1998, which outsiders organized, insult community members’ sensibilities (“She hardly looks like anyone here,” remarks one of the local inhabitants; while claiming that she appeared to have “corn dough in her teeth”). Perhaps this is where the notion of Chocolate and Corn Flour came from. Also, a further denigration of the black race, universally.
It is interesting to note in the author’s book that many of the San Nicoladenses, morenos or black Indians, have immigrated to Winston-Salem, North Carolina. As a matter of fact, there is a particular “Waughtown” area in Winston-Salem that when Latinos started moving in, blacks started moving out. Blacks now call it “little Mexico.” Lewis makes many such racial observations in her book. She suggests in Chocolate and Corn Flour that there is an inherent racial tension between blacks and Latinos, separate and apart from the dominant white culture.
Perhaps the most profound observation made by Lewis in her book as it regards San Nicolas, is the two-day ritual performance there for Independence Day (September 15) called La America or Los Apaches. Lewis states: “In San Nicolas, La America follows the template of a conquest play, but it is really about reconquest (independence) as Indians take territory back from Spaniards, thereby freeing the Mexican nation from its captors. On the surface the play seems straightforward: Indians defeat Spaniards and Mexico becomes an independent nation. But it also contains a hidden transcript as morenos align with the Indian victors and thus work themselves into a nation that has historically excluded them. It is now whites who are now written out of the nation as black Indians take its center. Rather than highlighting the tensions between marginalized peoples and a conflated nation-state (Cohen 1994:150), La America assimilates blackness to Indiananess as it effects a split between the nation, feminized and black Indian, and the state, which is masculinized and white. Thus the state and the nation are raced, gendered, and split apart.”
Interestingly, in this annual play, blacks as such are not obviously present in a ritual that commemorates freedom in a historically black region of Mexico, indeed the emancipation of blacks after independence is not mentioned at all, raises a number of troubling questions. The author further points out in Chocolate and Corn Flour: “Because there are no African survivals or even blacks in La America, morenos dressed up as Indians stand for Mexicans in a country that, as morenos repeatedly insist, has always been free, but one they know also rejects blackness. Indeed, for San Nicoladenses, even runaway slaves cease to be black once they reach land, where they mix with people already mixed. Unlike Indianness and whiteness, blackness has no symbolic or capital value in Mexico. The ritual therefore continues to efface blackness from the nation. This effacement repeats in coastal discourses centered on black’s alleged violence and laziness, and, from the perspective of San Nicoladenses, also in culture worker’s stress on blacks’ differences from other Mexicans because of their Africanness, related in both direct and indirect ways to a heritage culture workers essentialize in ‘blood,’ an issue addressed in the following chapters.”
Chocolate and Corn Flour is an insightful and remarkable study of color and race, with all its subtleties and implications, by a Professor of Anthropology that has obviously conducted many years of research on the subject. It is a book that I highly recommend.
Dennis Moore is the book review editor for SDWriteway, an online newsletter for writers in San Diego. He has been a freelance contributor to the Baja Times Newspaper in Rosarito Beach, Mexico and the San Diego Union-Tribune Newspaper. He is also the author of a book about Chicago politics; “The City That Works: Power, Politics and Corruption in Chicago. Mr. Moore can be contacted at contractsagency@gmail.com or you can follow him on Twitter at: @DennisMoore8.
Chocolate and Corn Flour: History, Race and Place in the Making of ‘Black’ Mexico
by Laura A. Lewis (Duke University Press, Durham, North Carolina, 2012, 370 pages)
A very interesting read. Thx.
The author, Laura A. Lewis, explained to me today that “Chocolate and Corn Flour” is the literal translation of the word “champurrado,” a chocolate based atole. She also said that a local woman once used it to describe to her the marriage of a Moreno man and an Indian woman.
A Mr. Vidal Cortez seems to take exception to my book review, as well as the author writing the book, as he states: “As an AfroMestizo (Mexican origin) born in the U.S., I find it troubling that African Americans or anyone else other than AfroMestizos, Meronos, or AfroMexicanos would write any type of literature regarding customs, traditions, ‘life of Mexican, Colombian, Puerto Rican, or any other AfroMestizo born from Spanish colonialism …. I would never consider telling the world of African American struggles, customs, beliefs, no matter how many books I’ve read or number of people I’ve interviewed …. knowing that people with cancer does not make me an authority on life of those with cancer …. Mexico and her people that are able to trace their roots back to colonial times are almost all AfroMestizo (being of all 3 bloods) and some have a distinct African phenotype while most appear more indigenous however make no mistake, a few hundred years of miscegenation has produced our beautiful mix of bloods. As far as the white Mexicans go we all know that they and their forefathers arrived after the colonial period (probably during and after the 1860′s). These white immigrants and the children of these immigrants played No Part in our independence from Spain. Granted, that most Mexicans who are able to trace their roots back to colonial Mexico, aka new Spain, almost always deny their African blood (no matter how great or less the percentage may be) some want to hide it (and they can because their phenotype screams indigenous) while others may not even be aware of their African blood. Nonetheless this is an issue that needs to be realized and addressed by my pwople and no matter the outcome, it is ours … “
I can understand why the African admixture of Mexico is so unknown to you as well as the world. If you depend on Mexican “cultural authorities” as your source of info. regarding Mexico’s masses then you will always be blind to the truth. Anyone who thinks Mexico’s African admixture is restricted just to San Nicolas is obviously paying too much attention to Mexican “cultural authorities”… Stanford University conducted a MTDNA study of northern and central Mexico which may be yet another revelation to you. Simply google; MTDNA affinities of the peoples of north and central Mexico. Here you will find that Mexico’s “cultural authorities” are just as reliable as the colonial pseudo scientific racial classification known as “casta “
Ms. Lewis writes that “Mulatos” of colonial times were of Indigenous/African blood. I have no idea were she got this info. “Mulato” is the colonial casta term for a person of African/Spanish blood. The casts term for the Indigenous/African mix depended on the persons geographic location. Example: People of Indigenous/African blood that were born in Veracruz were called Jarochos meaning filthy pig. The same mix born in Guerrero were the colonial casta known as “Zambos ” meaning “Baboon” those of Puebla were called Chinacos, Michoacan (Cochos ) meaning pigs. Oaxaca born were called Cambujos Modern day Mexico.city called Chilangos… All of these terms are Vulgar and derogatory. I don’t have the correct citations for this info. however it is available in Gonzalo A. Beltran’s book “La poblacion negra de Mexico” (1944)
If after viewing the Stanford study of north and central Mexico you ask yourself, why do most Mexicans not look very African? It’s because Mexico’s colonialism preached misegenation equals happiness. During colonial Mexico children born of a free parent were also free. This mindset continued for 300 plus years. Today Mexicans that are able to trace their roots back to colonial Mexico from northern and central Mexico test between 4-12% African haplotype (it takes at least 25% to show African phenotype) Those of southern Mexico range between 21-48% and most do have an African phenotype…. Mexico’s “cultural authorities” use the Indigenous Mestizo phenotype coupled with the white /middle eastern immigrant influence that arrived during the 1860′s to hide and deny Mexico’s. African admixture.
Very interesting revelation, as I never prnofessed to be an expert in Mexican history or folklore. Thanks for the clarification, as in my naivete, and possibly ignorance, I knew nothing of a black presence or cultural history in Mexico. This book raised a lot of interesting questions for me, and it was certainly educational. I just trust that I got the right education about this perplexing matter.
Not at all Mr. Moore. I apologize if my very long and unorthodox comment seemed patronizing or insulting. Most people, including Mexicans (who conflate nationality and race) are unaware of Mexico’s West African slave history. I was 42 years old before I discovered the studies of Dr. Gonzalo A. Beltran, “La Poblacion Negra de Mexico” (1944). This book tells of historical Spanish colonial ship’s manifest that document importation of more than 250,000 West African slaves into the ports of Veracruz and Alcapulco. It’s believed by some that the number of African slaves actually was closer to 500,000 (equal to the U.S.) when the illegally imported slaves are factored in. The greatest difference between the U.S. and Mexico is 350+ years of miscegenation. Mexico had her first Barrack Obama in 1821 while “Guess who’s coming to dinner” did not debut until the 1960′s. After this book was published Mr. Beltran was pressured by the gov. to halt all studies. The world knows exactly what the criollo government of Mexico dictates and not unlike most governments, the criollos lie. Again I apologize for coming across as insulting. Not the case. I’m glad to know that Mexico’s African admixture is being realized.
Not at all Mr. Moore. I apologize if my very long and unorthodox comment seemed patronizing or insulting. Most people, including Mexicans (who conflate nationality and race) are unaware of Mexico’s West African slave history. I was 42 years old before I discovered the studies of Dr. Gonzalo A. Beltran, “La Poblacion Negra de Mexico” (1944). This book tells of historical jSpanish colonial ship’s manifest that document importation of more than 250,000 West African slaves into the ports of Veracruz and Alcapulco. It’s believed by some that the number of African slaves actually was closer to 500,000 (equal to the U.S.) when the illegally imported slaves are factored in. The greatest difference between the U.S. and Mexico is 350+ years of miscegenation. Mexico had her first Barrack Obama in 1821 while “Guess who’s coming to dinner” did not debut until the 1960′s. After this book was published Mr. Beltran was pressured by the gov. to halt all studies. The world knows exactly what the criollo government of Mexico dictates and not unlike most governments, the criollos lie. Again I apologize for coming across as insulting. Not the case. I’m glad to know that Mexico’s African admixture is being realized.