Addressing the absence of scholarship on black populations in Mexico, this edited volume is a rich collection of essays that draws attention to current scholarship from numerous disciplines. Black Mexico: Race and Society from Colonial to Modern Times, edited by Ben Vinson III and Matthew Restall, emerged from a symposium at Penn State University in 2004 entitled “New Directions in North American Scholarship on Afro-Mexico.” This comprehensive volume considers colonial and modern Mexico, the former more historical in approach while the latter incorporates reflections on anthropological fieldwork. Scholars engage the literature on social, ethnic, and race construction, rebellion and agency, and shifts in the definition of self. The text offers regional case studies for a broad understanding of how race was represented and performed in the colonial period, and suggests that the continued exclusion of blacks as an ethnic group has profoundly impacted social structure in contemporary Mexico.
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