If you google Blacks in Mexico, the first website you will see is http://www.afromexico.com/. This website was created by a brother, Bobby Vaughn, in 2006, to help people explore the history of blacks in Mexico. Vaughn earned his Ph.D in anthropology at Stanford University. His dissertation was Race and Ethnicity: A Study of Blackness in Mexico. He is currently Associate Professor of Anthropology at Notre Dame de Namur University. In honor of Cinco de Mayo, I decided to interview Bobby Vaughn for the website.

For years, your website has been THE place where people first know that Afro-Mexicans exist. How did you first learn that there were Afro-Mexicans in Mexico?

I first learned about Afro-Mexicans during a study abroad trip to Mexico back in 1992.  I was studying at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City and I took a bus trip to the Costa Chica to see for myself whether, indeed, there were Afro-Mexican communities there.  Prior to the road trip I had stumbled across some books on the subject, but none of my Mexico City friends knew whether Mexicans of African descent existed or not!  So I had to do some investigating on my own.

Can you describe the Costa Chica region to all of us who have never been? What is the landscape? How are the beaches? Where is it!!? (For all my people who don’t know)

The Costa Chica is located along Mexico’s southern coast on the Pacific Ocean.  The nearest large cities are Acapulco in the state of Guerrero and Puerto Escondido in the state of Oaxaca.  The landscape is fairly uneventful (sorry Costa Chicans!) and relatively flat.  It is not beautiful in a spectacular way, but sunsets over coconut palms are part of the scene in most towns.  The beaches in the Costa Chica are quite undeveloped, meaning no stores, vendor, or much of anything.  This can be very peaceful, but they are not seen as beautiful  as are the more touristy beaches that you are aware of.   The individual towns are dusty and hot and the pace is very slow.  There will be dogs, chickens, and horses around, and lots of kids playing and laughing.

How did black people get to Mexico and WHY don’t many people know about them?

Black people arrived to Mexico in much the same way that we arrived to wherever we are found in the Western Hemisphere – the slave trade.  The Spanish brought slaves from Africa to Mexico primarily in the last 1500s up through the 1600s.  After that, the slave trade to Mexico pretty much subsided, just as it was really gearing up in the rest of the Americas.  I think most people in Mexico don’t know about the black population for two basic reasons.  First, it is a very small population that lives in parts of Mexico that are relatively isolated (much more so  30 or 40 years ago) and there is very little reason for “outsiders” to be there.  Secondly, I think that in Mexico, the government and intellectual classes have down-played the existence of these Afro-Mexicans, preferring to focus attention on the indigenous roots of Mexico.  Mexican blacks, for example, are rarely mentioned in the state-run school textbooks.

Bobby Vaughn has a strong relationship with the Afro-Mexicans of the Costa Chica region in Mexico

The pictures on your site of the Afro-Mexican communities are so intimate. How were you able to gain access to these communities?

Gaining access was very easy for me.  I have learned that being friendly and being quick with a smile has always served me well in my field work.  Being able to speak Spanish was also very helpful in forging relationships with people.  More than anything, any level of trust that I have earned with people in Mexico is a product of many years of traveling to the same places and maintaining relationships over time.

Do Afro-Mexicans identify themselves as black? Or would you say they don’t see race?

Continue reading Yes there ARE Black People in Mexico: An Interview with Anthropologist Bobby Vaughn