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Friday, August 28, 2009

The Thorntons: Saga of an Afro-Mexican Family
Alva Moore Stevenson

From Compton to Newark, with frequent headlines screeching about violence between Mexican and Black youth, one could easily be convinced that relations between the two groups have always been brimming with hostility. The media’s embrace of sensationalism blots out an important aspect of history and a very different kind of relationship: the Afro-Mexican family dating back a century. I am Afro-Mexican. Stories like those of my family, those of entire Afro-Mexican communities in the United States, have been ignored for too long. In this society where racial and ethnic identity is narrowly defined, we haven’t fit into anyone’s box. How does a person of African-American and Mexican heritage self-identify? What were the experiences of our foreparents who embraced each other across national and ethnic lines? I hope to answer these questions by sharing the story of my family.

The root of the Afro-Mexican Thornton family can be traced back to 19th century Versailles, Ky. It was there that James Thornton, reportedly of African, European and Choctaw ancestry, was born a slave in 1835. He was mustered into the U.S. Colored Troops’ 12th Heavy Artillery regiment during the Civil War. James was court-martialed and tried on charges of mutiny for supposed offenses against a White officer. His original sentence to be shot by musketry was commuted to hard labor on the Dry Tortugas islands off the Florida coast. But the war ended before he could serve his sentence and he left Kentucky for Kerr County, Texas.
Believed to be the first Black landowner in that county, James married Adeline Joiner in 1870 and they had 12 children. One of them was my grandfather, Daniel.

My great-grandparents told their children they would never be treated fairly in the U.S. and should either go to Canada or Mexico. Daniel chose Mexico and migrated there around the turn of the century. Arriving in Guadalajara, he quickly became fluent in Spanish and secured a position as a foreman helping to build the Mexican railroad. He was the liaison between English-speaking White management and Spanish-speaking Mexican workers.

Tráncito Pérez de Ruíz, my grandmother, was born in San José de Grácia, Sinaloa, a mining town. Tráncito had fled the ranch where she lived during the Mexican Revolution because many girls were kidnapped and raped. She worked in the army of General Elias Plutarco Calles as a cook and nursemaid. One of her most memorable moments was serving breakfast to Calles, Pancho Villa and General Alvaro Obregón. Daniel met Tráncito and they married in 1914.
My grandparents were provided a caboose to live in until work on the railroad was completed. Then they migrated to Nogales, Ariz. The Thorntons joined a small, tightly-knit enclave of Afro-Mexican families living in that border town between the 1920s and 1950s. Many were Black soldiers, from nearby Camp Stephen D. Little and later Fort Huachuca, who married Mexican women from across the line.

Daniel spent time as caretaker at the Nogales City Cemetery, as a mail carrier, as a worker at the Tovrea meat packing plant and as the owner of a shoeshine parlor. Tráncito owned a restaurant for a short time, but gave it up to raise her family. They had eight children, including my mother, Lydia Esther. My grandmother was also ordained as a minister in the El Mesías United Mexican Methodist Church in 1947. My mother and her siblings were native Spanish speakers who learned English only upon attending school. Nogales’ segregated Grand Avenue School was a one-room building with African-American teachers. In many Afro-Mexican families, there were children born to the women during previous marriages to Mexican men, such as my Aunt Soledad, who we called “Sally.” By virtue of having Black stepfathers, they too were mandated to attend the segregated school.

There was a unique syncretism expressed between these children—Afro-Mexican, African American and Mexican—as friends and classmates. Language and culture was shared. Afro-Mexican and Mexican children taught their African-American classmates Spanish. At the first annual reunion of the Grand Avenue/Frank Reed School in Nogales in 1994, I observed that many of the African-American students had remained fluent. My mother was one of the first Nogalians to enlist in World War II. She was given a choice to join either a White or Black regiment. She chose the Black regiment—the 6888th Central Postal Directory otherwise known as the Black WACS. Like others of this second generation of Afro-Mexican families, she left Nogales after World War II for Los Angeles, where she married and became a bilingual schoolteacher.

Much has been written about biracials who are Black and White, but not about those who are of two marginalized groups. In the Thornton family, my mother and her siblings saw themselves as African American, as Mexican or fluidly, able to shift between two identities. Key for them was to self-identify in ways they perceived would give them the best quality of life. In varying degrees, the self-identity of second generation Thorntons was tied to their ability to speak Spanish. This comes into much sharper focus in the third generation. My sister, my cousins and I carved out a self-identity largely based on language. Those who did not speak Spanish generally identified as Black. Others, such as some older cousins, who became fluent at a Spanish-speaking convent, gravitated towards a Mexican identity.

I view my family’s history in a much larger context. It is important to look at the history of the southwest U.S., Mexico and the Spanish-speaking Americas. You will find African peoples brought into Mexico, for instance, both as slaves and free people as early as the beginning of the 16th century. One of them, Juan Garrído, came with the party of Hernán Cortes and was the first person to sow wheat in the hemisphere.

Some Afro-Mexicans traveled north into the southwest U.S.—then part of the Spanish Crown and later Mexico— such as the family of Pío Píco, a businessman, military leader and the last Mexican governor of California. Conversely, African Americans fled south to escape virulent racism, such as James Hughes, the father of writer Langston Hughes. He migrated to Mexico in 1909 to work for the Sultepec Electric Light and Power Company.

Afro-Mexicans in Mexico and the U.S. exist. We may be left out of the history books, but that doesn’t make our contributions to the development of both cultures and both countries any less significant.

3 comments:

  1. How can I research my afro mexican roots my grandfather has family there some where I would very much like to find them

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  2. Sorry for the delay in responding. I would suggest speaking with your older family members. Perhaps they can give you names of your relatives and where they might have lived. There are several online sources such as Familysearch (https://www.familysearch.org/s/collection/list)
    where you might find records. Ancestry.com is also good but you must subscribe for about $150 per year. If you are able to determine exact towns/cities and states in Mexico, and you have the means, you might want to consult local records. Please let me know if I can help further.

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  3. Alva, you clearly have a strong affinity with your African heritage and identify as Afro-Mexican. May I ask, how do most people perceive you? Do they perceive your features as African or African-Mestizo? I am sorry if my question seems awkward, but I am curious. Thanks.

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