Afro-Mexicans: Discourses of race and identity in the African diaspora, by Chege Githiora

Abstract

These books reflect two aspects of recent trends in scholarship on Afro-descendants in Latin America. The first is an interest in diaspora and the movement of ideas and people around the Atlantic, spurred by Gilroy’s pioneering work on the Black Atlantic, but with deeper roots in studies by scholars like Philip Curtin and Fernand Braudel who worked on trans-Atlantic systems of economic and intellectual exchange. The second is the widening of the geographical range of studies on Afro-Latins, beyond the classic locations of Brazil, Cuba, and, more recently, Colombia, to encompass countries such as Peru, Mexico, and Honduras. Although anthropological work on Mexico’s Afro-descendants dates back to Aguirre Beltrán’s 1958 study of the village of Cuijla, rather little attention has been paid, until recently, to Afro-Mexican populations of the Costa Chica region and around Veracruz. The edited volume by Sansone, Soumonni and Barry is a welcome addition to the growing literature that places the formation of black identity in a trans-Atlantic frame, with a focus here on the southern Atlantic, especially Brazil and Africa. The volume grew out of a conference held in Africa and scholars from the ‘North’ (Canada, Europe, US) are outnumbered by those from the ‘South’ (Brazil and Africa). History is the dominant influence, followed by social anthropology. Sansone’s introduction contextualizes the book’s key theme in relation to scholarship on black peoples in the Americas – the influence of Mintz and Price’s 1976 publication on Afro-American culture is still a departure point. He remains agnostic in the debate between those who favour the idea of ‘early creolization’ and constant hybridization and those whom he labels ‘new Afrocentrists’, who focus on ethnogenesis in Africa and its influence on the formation of identities in the Americas.