UNCOVERING THE LONG HISTORY OF BLACKS IN MEXICO

By ALVA MOORE STEVENSON

It is generally believed that Blacks who accompanied the conquistadors were the first
Africans in Mexico.

One of the earliest was Juan Garrido, who accompanied Spanish colonizer Hernán Cortes
around 1510 and participated in the fall of Tenochtitlan, capital of the Aztecs. Garrido
was the first person to sow wheat and manufacture flour in the Western Hemisphere.

Other early Africans brought to Mexico as slaves came with the party of Pánfilo Narváez
in 1519. In the early 1500s, they replaced indigenous laborers who had been decimated
by European-imported diseases. Between the mid-16th and mid-17th centuries, the
numbers of Africans at times exceeded the indigenous population. For a very short
period, more Africans were imported into Mexico than any other part of the Americas.

Afro-Mexicans such as Vicente Guerrero played critical roles in Mexico's independence

of August 1821. Of African and indigenous ancestry, Guerrero was born of the peasant
class and worked as a mule driver. He became commander in chief of the Mexican army
during the last three years of the war for independence which lasted from 1810 to 1821.
He was a member of the three-person junta that ruled Mexico for part of the post-war
period from 1823 to 1824. And he was president of the country from 1829 into early
1830.

Alva Moore Stevenson is a historian at UCLA's Center for Oral History Research
documenting the history of African Americans in Los Angeles. Her own academic
research focuses on the history and culture of Afro-Mexicans.

Alva can be reached at afromex_2000@yahoo.com.

Copyright © 1998 Runoko Rashidi. All rights reserved.