Anthropologist Anthony Russell Jerry proposes to examine Blackness in Mexico in its dialectical relation with citizenship and therefore mestizaje. His research was conducted in the region called Costa Chica of Oaxaca State, on the Pacific coast of southern Mexico (with occasional visits to the neighboring state of Guerrero), recognized as an important Black region, from 2011 on. This research took place as Felipe Calderón's government organized a series of consultations in the region to officially recognize the population then named “Afro-Mexican.” The author observed the informative assemblies and consultations carried out by the National Commission for the Development of Indigenous Peoples (CDI) together with a group of local activists and cultural managers involved in determining the cultural specificities of people with African ancestry in the region.
To synthesize the core argument: The official recognition of Afro-Mexicans has been made on the basis of the multicultural model that resorts to...