George P.Johnson: Early Black Filmmaker in Los Angeles

George Perry Johnson was born in Colorado Springs, Colorado, October 29, 1885; after his graduation from the Hampton Institute, Virginia (1904), he settled in Tulsa, Oklahoma and started the first Negro paper in the territory, The Tulsa Guide (June 9, 1906); moved to Omaha, Nebraska (1913) and was the first Negro employee at the U.S. Post Office in that city; he eventually moved to Los Angeles and continued working for the post office.
George Johnson’s brother Noble, already a noted film actor with Universal Film Company, formed the Lincoln Motion Picture Company in 1915 to produce and distribute nationally photoplays of and by Negroes. George joined the company as booking manager, distributor, producer and writer.



The company produced five films: A Man’s Duty; By Right of Birth; Trooper of Troop K; Realization of the Negro’s Ambition; and The Law of Nature. This would set the stage in 1918 for Oscar Micheaux to form the Micheaux Film and Book Company keep Black independent filmmaking viable until 1948. After the demise of Lincoln Motion Picture Company in 1923, Mr. Johnson established and ran the Pacific Coast News Bureau for the dissemination of Negro news of national importance (1923-27); he started the Negros in Film collection about the time he started working for Lincoln; he died October 17, 1977.

Biddy Mason

Biddy Mason

(1818-1891)

Mason traveled to Los Angeles with her owner, Robert Smith. and three small daughters. Arriving in 1851, Smith held Biddy and her children illegally in slavery for several years. California had never been a slave state. Biddy petitioned the court and won her freedom and that of her children in 1856. She became an astute financier and property owner. Biddy’s property on what is now Spring Street is at the hub of Los Angeles’s financial and business district. A philanthropist who believed in giving back to her community – she co-founded First African Methodist Episcopal in 1872. She gave freely to many charities and assisted the poor and destitute of all races and ethnicities

Early Blacks in California Politics

Frederick Madison Roberts

1879-1952

The family of Frederick Madison Roberts (1879-1952) migrated to Los Angeles in the mid 1880s. By the teens of century he was editor of the New Age and a strong advocate for African American civil rights in Los Angeles. Mr. Roberts and his publication were a strong counterpoint to the racism in white newspapers and advertisements He also played a leading role in his family’s mortuary business and was a prominent member of Los Angeles’s African American community. Roberts was elected to the California State Assembly from the 74th District in November 1918 – the first African American in the state’s history. He was re-elected in 1920.

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Mervyn Dymally

1926-

A native of Trinidad, migrated to the United States in 1946. His involvement in public service began as a Field Coordinator in the campaign of John F. Kennedy in 1960. He was elected to the California State Assembly and served from 1962-66. In 1966 he was elected to the California State Senate becoming the first African American to do so. Mr. Dymally would again make history in 1974 becoming the first African American Lieutenant Governor in the state’s history. In 1980 he became the first foreign-born African American to be elected to the United States Congress. After a 10-year hiatus Dymally returned to the California State Assembly from the 52nd District (2002-2008) and was Chair of the Legislative Black Caucus.

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Gilbert Lindsay

(1900-91)

Lindsay was the first African American to serve on the Los Angeles City Council. Born on a cotton plantation in Jasper County, Mississippi, he left the South for school in Pittsburgh and migrated to Arizona where he served with the U.S. Army in both the 10th Calvary and the 25th Infantry. Mr. Lindsay began his working career in Los Angeles as a janitor in the basement of the Department of Water and Power. He made history when he was appointed deputy to Supervisor Kenneth Hahn in 1952. Mr. Lindsay held that position for ten years before replacing Edward Roybal as councilman in the Ninth District. As the self-proclaimed “Emperor of the Great Ninth District,.” Lindsay’s leadership engendered commercial development as well as senior citizen housing, recreation and childcare centers from downtown Los Angeles to South Los Angeles.

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Yvonne Braithwaite Burke

1932-

Burke was the first African American woman elected to the California State Assembly from the 63rd District in 1966. and in 1972 the first elected to the United States Congress from the 37th District. In 1992 Yvonne Burke continued her record of “firsts” with her election to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.

6888th Central Postal Directory

My mother, Lydia Esther Thornton, was one of the first to enlist in World War II from her hometown of Nogales, Arizona. Bilingual and biracial (African American and Mexican heritage) she was given the option of joining either a Black or White unit. She chose the Black unit (6888th Central Postal Directory) which was the only one comprised of Black women to serve in the European theater during WWII. See below for more information on these remarkable women:

Organized in February, 1945 as the 6888th Central Postal Battalion and commanded by Maj. (later Lt. Col.) Charity Adams, these 800 women were stationed in Birmingham, England, for three months, moved to Rouen, France, and finally settled in Paris. The battalion was responsible for the redirection of mail to all U.S. personnel in the European Theater of Operations (including Army, Navy, Marine Corps, civilians, and Red Cross workers), a total of over seven million people. When mail could not be delivered to the address on the face of the envelope, it was sent to the Postal Directory to be redirected. The 6888th kept an updated information card on each person in the theater. Some personnel at the front moved frequently, often requiring several information updates per month. The WACs worked three eight-hour shifts seven days a week to clear out the tremendous backlog of Christmas mail. Each shift averaged 65,000 pieces of mail. Although the women's workload was heavy, their spirits were high because they realized how important their work was in keeping up morale at the front. From: Electronic New Jersey: A Digital Archive of New Jersey History. Website: http://www.scc.rutgers.edu/njh/WW2/ww2women/wacoverseas.htm

Gaspar Yanga

Did you know that… Gaspar Yanga (which means a king of people who belongs to royalty) is said to have descended from royalty in Gabon and was brought to Veracruz, México as a slave. He led an uprising and escape of slaves from a sugar plantation in Veracruz in 1570. Established in Cofre de Perde in the mountains near Orizaba, the maroon settlement or palenque called San Lorenzo de los Negros (called Yanga in the present day) had sixty dwellings with eighty men and more than twenty-four women (African and Indian), and several children. At the settlement’s height there lived some five-hundred people. The Yangicos (as Yanga’s followers were termed) were farmers and raised livestock. They practiced a form of self-government fashioned upon several Central African models. It was hierarchical and oriented towards the needs of self-defense and retaliation The Yanguicos eluded capture for more than thirty years until the Spaniards decided to negotiate in 1608. The Yanguícos also secured provisions by raids upon the Spanish caravans bringing goods from the highlands to Veracruz. Yanga and the Spanish Crown signed a unique (for its time) treaty of accommodation and conciliation in September of that year. There was no surrender. The points of the treaty were as follows; 1) All of the Yanguicos who fled prior to September of 1608 were freed; those who fled after this date were returned to their masters; 2) the palenque was chartered as a free town with Yanga as governor; 3) only the Franciscan friar would minister to them; 4) the Yanguicos would return fugitive slaves and aid the Crown in case of external attack; 5) the Spaniards could only visit on market days and 6) they received a farmable grant of land. “Yanga’s maroon movement is a notable incident in the history of Negroes in Mexico—the only known example of a fully successful attempt by slaves to secure their freedom en masse by revolt and negotiation and to have it sanctioned and guaranteed by law” Yanga and his followers finally brokered a treaty with the Crown in 1630 which included freedom for the Yanguícos; self-government; and a farmable land grant on Mount Totutla. By the time of his death, Yanga secured from the Spaniards freedom for his followers and their own "free town." Today he is national hero in Mexico.

Pio Píco (5 May 1801-11 Sept 1894), revolutionary, governor, city councilman, landowner and businessman was born Pio de Jesus Píco at the San Gabriel Mission in California. His ancestry was African, Hispanic, Native American and European. Pico was the fourth of ten children. His parents were José María Pico, founder of the Píco family in Southern California and a native of Fuerte, Sinaloa, Mexico. His wife, María Eustaquia Gutiérrez, hailed from San Miguel de Horcasitas, Sonora. José Pico migrated to California in 1801 with the Anza Expedition. Among the positions he held were sergeant and corporal. Many members of the Pico family served in the military including Pio Píco’s maternal and paternal uncles. The military career of José Pico perhaps set the tone and example for not only his sons’ military but political involvement. Andrés was both captain and chief commander in the Mexican army and signed the Treaty of Cahuenga which paved the way for California to become a part of the U.S. After statehood, he was assemblyman for both the First and Second Districts. José Antonio served as both sergeant and lieutenant.

After the death of his father in 1819, Pio and his family were moved south to San Diego. Their financial circumstances were grim – they had no monies or property. He ran a general store of sorts which carried liquors, provisions, chairs and shoes. Pico also traded and sold cattle, sugar and other goods. His mother María and sisters including Tomasa worked at fine needlework. Little is known of Pico’s early formal education except that he learned to read and write from Matilde and Don José Carrillo. Although Don Carrillo had a school at the presidio of San Diego, it is unlikely Pio ever attended. There is no indication that Píco, indeed, received any formal institutional learning. At a relatively early age – somewhere in his early-to-mid twenties he would begin gambling, a habit which would plague him throughout his life.

The Pico family was intimately involved in the politics of the day. Patriarch José María remained in the active Mexican military until his death. California was a part of Spain and subsequently Mexico, which gained its independence in 1821. The state then became a part of the United States with the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 which ceded California to the U.S. Pío was politically aware but would not become actually involved until 1827-1828 when he was named scribe or secretary to Attorney General Captain Don Pablo de la Portilla. Pío’s political opinions were forming, influenced by his late father and other military officials. He felt that the people or the citizens comprised the nation [California] over which the military had no superiority. This really forms the core of his political views and role as a revolutionary in the early days of the state (prior to 1848) which was yet a part of Mexico. This time period was one of revolutions and counter-revolutions which were the order of the day during California’s Mexican period. They were also the means for political advancement. Pico was integrally involved in the unrest and was a major player in the unsuccessful attempt to establish Los Angeles as the seat of the Mexican territory in 1828. In 1831 he would be one of the leaders of a revolt against the despotic policies of Governor (Jéfe Político or Political Chief) Manuel Victoria. Victoria would surrender after the famous (First) Battle of Cahuenga and Pico installed as Provisional Governor for a short period of twenty days. Pico married María Ygnacia Amador in February of 1834 in Los Angeles. Like Pico’s father, María’s father Javier Alvarado was also a career soldier. In April of that same year Pico was named administrator of the Missíon de San Luís Rey.

In 1845, after the Second Battle of Cahuenga against Governor Manuel Micheltorena, Pico was installed in the gubernatorial office (1845-46). During his tenure he would be responsible for the secularization of the California mission system. As told to Thomas Savage in 1877:

“My principal objective in respect to these establishments
was to abolish completely the regime of the missions,
and to establish pueblos in their place, reserving the
necessary buildings for worship and the needs of their
ministers, while suitable buildings would be assigned
for ayuntamientos [city halls] and public schools.” (Pico, 121)

This meant that the vast land holdings of the Catholic Church were sold to private parties. As well the administration of the missions was passed from the missionaries to secular clergy. Píco was accused of recklessly redistributing mission property to friends and allies of the Mexican government – as well as himself - as the American takeover of California neared. Sold off were the missions of San Gábriel, San Luís Rey, San Fernando, San Diego, San Juan Capistrano and San Buenaventura. He personally amassed vast acreages of land including Rancho Santa Margarita y Las Flores in what is now Orange County and Rancho Paso de Bartolo in what is now Whittier. Píco also is successful this time in relocating the capital of California from Monterey to Los Angeles. One of his great concerns was the unchecked immigration of Americans into the state. In a foreshadowing of similar sentiment today he laments:

"What are we to do then? Shall we remain supine, while these daring strangers are overrunning our fertile plains, and gradually outnumbering and displacing us? Shall these incursions go on unchecked, until we shall become strangers in our own land?"
-- Pio Pico

The impending threat of an American takeover of California was very real. There was a lack of financial resources and none forthcoming from the Mexican government. Given that fact, Píco also considered whether the state should not be an independent protectorate of either the British Empire or France. Mexican General Andres Pico, brother of Pío, surrendered California to American forces under General John Fremont at Campo de Cahuenga. on January 13, 1847. Fearing reprisals or worse from those same American forces; Pico fled to Sonora, México.

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, which ceded the state and much of the Southwest to the Americans, signaled the end of the Mexican period in California. Píco would be the last Mexican Governor of California before American statehood.

Using his position as councilman in Los Angeles as well as his wealth and influence, Pico establishes education, banking and town development. He was responsible for building the Pico House in 1870 on Main Street which still stands today. In its day, this hotel was the largest and most luxurious as well the city’s social nexus. Pico was an early pioneer in California’s first oil venture which would eventually become Standard Oil Company of California

In Don Pio Pico’s Historical Narrative translated by Arthur Botello (1973) Pico gives great detail of his life and military career. It is notable to mention the absence in this book of any discussion of either his race or ethnicity. One could safely surmise that he considered himself a Mexican.

Disadvantaged by his illiteracy in English and near the end of his life; Pico was swindled out of his vast land holdings. In a financial bind, he entered into a questionable transaction with one Bernard Cohn which was the title to all of his properties masquerading as a mortgage. Pico appealed to the California Supreme Court to re-establish title in a seven-year court case. In Pico v. Cohn (Cal, 1891) the judgment was against him. The ruin of Píco typified the demise of the landowning Dons in California when it became a part of the United States. Their vast wealth was either reduced or completely decimated. Penniless and ill, Pío Píco died in 1894 at the age of 93 in Los Angeles at the home of his daughter Joaquína Moreno.

The name Pío Píco is prominent in Southern California history as evidenced today by Californian place names which include Pico Boulevard, the city of Pico Rivera as well as the many businesses which bear the name. Little known is the fact that the Picos were one of many Afro-Mexican families including Camero, Reyes, Tápia and Valdez who played key roles in California state and city government and were landowners in the 19th century. His shortcomings aside, Pío Píco was an early champion of the rights of the State of California spanning the Spanish, Mexican and American Periods.


Bibliography


Píco dictated his memory of the revolutionary years in California history to Thomas Savage in 1877. This was translated from the original Spanish by Arthur P. Botello as Don Pio Pico’s Historical Narrative (1973). For information on the American period of Pío Píco’s life consult Pío Píco Mansion: Fact, Fiction and Supposition (Journal of the West v. 2, no. 3, July 1963). Additional material may also be found in the Pio Pico Papers housed at the University of California, Berkeley Bancroft Library. In addition there are three dissertations: Pio Pico, ranchero and politician by Marian Elizabeth Smith (1971); Pio Pico: last Mexican Governor of California by Hallie Evelyn Rice (1932); and Don Pio de Jesus Pico: his Biography and Place in History by Jessie Elizabeth Bromilow (1931).



© Alva Moore Stevenson


San Diego Historical Society: San Diego biographies:
http://www.sandiegohistory.org/bio/pico/picopio.htm

San Fernando Historical Society: Pío Píco Remembered
http://www.sfvhs.com/piopico.htm

Early African Presence in Los Angeles

Did you know that… Of the forty-four pobladores or settlers of Los Angeles (or El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles del Río de Porciúncula) on September 4, 1781--twenty-six were of African descent.? The Spanish Governor Felipe de Neve recruited the new Angelenos from several states in Mexico including Sonora and Sinaloa where a majority of the residents were of mixed Indian, African and European ancestry. Indeed this was typical of not only these states but the entire northwestern region of Mexico. The settlers left their homeland with the promise of free land. Los Angeles was intended as an agricultural colony by the Crown which would supply the northern establishments. Descendants of these early settlers- the families of Camero, Mesas, Quintero, Reyes, Rosas and others - would go on to contribute much to the civic life of the fledgling city:

· Juan Francisco Reyes served as the first Black mayor of Los Angeles from 1793-1795. He was the original owner of the San Fernando Valley Rancho and the first grantee of the San Fernando Valley proper.

· Manuel Camero, of African descent and a native of Acaponeta, Nayarit, was elected to the Los Angeles City Council in 1788.

· Tiburcio Tápia, grandson of Felipe Tápia (of African descent) served as mayor of Los Angeles from 1830-31 and later a judge in the years following 1833. In 1839 Governor Juan Alvarado granted the 13,000 acre Cucamonga tract to Tapía

· Maria Rita Valdez, granddaughter of Luis Quintero (one of original Black founders of Los Angeles in 1781) inherited the 4,500 acre rancho Rio Rodeo de las Aguas or El Rodeo de las Aguas upon the death of her husband (Spanish soldier Vicente Ferrer Valdez) in 1828. Due to repeated raids upon her herds of cattle, she sold the property in 1854. The adobe was built at what is today the northwest corner of Sunset Boulevard and Alpine Drive. Today this area is known as Beverly Hills.

Afro Mexicans: In Mexico and California

Scholars such as Ivan Van Sertima (They Came Before Columbus) assert that Egyptians and Nubians came to Mexico in the Pre-Columbian period (c.1200 BC. The Olmec civilization may be descended from or had contact with Africans. He cites as evidence the African facial features of the Olmec heads at La Venta, Tabasco and San Lorenzo. Van Sertima’s research is controversial and not widely accepted by mainstream historians. Those in the field would probably agree that Blacks who accompanied the conquistadors of Cortez [they numbered 300 during his expeditions] were the first persons of African descent in Mexico. One of the earliest was Juan Garrído, who accompanied Hernán Cortes (c.1519) and participated in the fall of Tenochtitlan. Garrido is generally credited to be the first person to sow wheat in the Western Hemisphere.

Afro-Mexicans in the 16th century fell into three categories: slaves; unarmed auxiliaries (servants and slaves) and armed auxiliaries such as Garrído, who obtained their freedom. Garrído was also credited with introducing wheat into the Americas. According to Matthew Restall (Black Conquistadors), “it is primarily after this date [1510] that armed black servants and slaves begin to play significant military roles in Spanish conquest enterprises.”

The first Africans brought to Mexico as slaves came with the party of Pánfilo Narváez, also in 1519. They replaced Indios in the early 1500s because of European-imported diseases that had decimated the indigenous population. In the period between the mid-16th and the mid-17th centuries, the numbers of Africans at times exceeded the indigenous population. In addition for a very short time more Africans were imported into Mexico than any other part of the Americas. As in other parts of Latin America, slaves resisted their oppression. These maroons or cimarrones were reported to have fled and settled in such places as Coyula, Cuaxinecuilapan and Orizaba.

One of the more famous was Gaspar Yanga, reportedly descended from a royal family, who led a revolt on the sugar plantations of Veracruz in 1570. He led his followers into the nearby inaccessible mountains and kept the forces of the Crown at bay for many years. [From 1521 to 1821, "as many blacks as whites came to New Spain (also known as Mexico), about 250,000 of each," said CSUS historian Joseph Pitti. "Spanish California was a frontier of inclusion -- there were no barriers as far as race or color." --Stephen Magagnini]
Unprecedented in Mexican history, the Crown acceded to a treaty in 1630 which included freedom for the Yanguícos; self-government; and a farmable land grant. This was the first such treaty in the hemisphere.

The import of African slaves had all but ceased by the mid-16th century. What the Spaniards were confronted with in Mexico was an increasingly mixed society racially due to miscegenation. These castas or person of mixed blood not only blurred and crossed the racial lines but economic ones as well. R. Douglas Cope (The Limits of Racial Domination) describes the Spaniard’s dilemma: “Stunning wealth and wretched poverty, elegance and squalor, and sophistication and ignorance all existed side by side. Hispanic order [was imposed] on a recalcitrant population. In short the elite faced a rising tide of mixed-bloods, blacks, Indians and poor Spaniards that (in their view) threatened to submerge the city into chaos.”

The Spanish casta dichotomy gave way to a social dichotomy based on culture and economics and not race. To reinforce their exclusive class, a sistema de castas or caste system was instituted in Mexico as a method of social control. This was a hierarchical ordering of racial groups according to their limpieza de sangre or purity of blood. That is, their place in society corresponded to their proportion of Spanish blood. Cope says that the castas for the most part eschewed the sistema: “[By the late 16th century] Africans and Afro-Mexicans created a ‘sphere of relative autonomy.’ Their unity and boundaries didn’t shield them from ‘ideological or structural oppression.’ Through these multiple identities they structured social relations and built boundaries of kinship and family.

Multiple Black boundaries were characterized by interactions between ethnic Africans, Africans and Creoles, Negros, Mulattos, and Moriscos. In turn this reflected a wide range of African and Afro Mexican identities. Persons of African descent were only united though contact with the non-African ‘other’ (this did not mean Africans) and left their culture behind. Rather they molded it to fit circumstances [In the New World].”It should also be noted that Afro-Mexicans such as Vicente Guerrero played critical roles in Mexico’s independence of August, 1821. A champion of rights for all regardless of color and the country’s second president; Guerrero was one of the signers of the Plan of Iguala. The Plan led to Mexico’s freedom from Spain and gave all men and women, regardless of color, full citizenship.

Martha Menchaca (Recovering History, Constructing Race) discusses the reasons behind the northward migration of Afro-Mexicans and other non-white Mexicans in the early 19th century: “Blatant racial disparities became painfully intolerable to the non-white population and generated the conditions for their movement toward the northern frontier, where the racial order was relaxed and people of color had the opportunity to own land and enter most occupations.”

In the period up to 1848 and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the sistema “which was designed to ensure the maintenance of caste, quickly disintegrated on its northern frontier, allowing persons of African ancestry remarkable social fluidity.” Like the castas in that time period in Mexico City, early African American Californians were “uninterested in the complexities of the sistema de castas.” It did not dictate daily life. The ambiguity of the sistema made possible the success of Afro-Mexicans Andres and Pio Píco. Píco was the last Mexican governor (1831, 1845-46) of California. A "consummate politician and ‘revolutionist’ ", Pio Píco was also a wealthy landowner, military commander and Los Angeles city councilman (1853). His brother Andres represented California at the signing of the Treaty of Cahuenga (1847) ending the Mexican War in California. He also served as state senator (1851, 1860-61). Not only in California but across the southwest, “afromestizos were part of the population that founded Nacogdoches, San Antonio, Laredo, La Bahía, Albuquerque, Los Angeles, and Santa Barbara.”

Several of the pobladores recruited by the Spanish Crown to settle Los Angeles in 1781 were of African descent. Of the afromestizos in the group some hailed from Rosario, Sinaloa (a town where many of the residents were of African descent). Indeed the Píco family also hailed from Rosario. Among the afromestizo families who became prominent landowners and politicians in Southern California during the late 18th-early 19th century were the families of Luís Quintero; María Rita Valdez; Juan Francisco Reyes and José Moreno.

Maria Rita Valdez, granddaughter of Luis Quintero, a Negro founder of Los Angeles, acquired the rancho Rio Rodeo de Los Aguas in the 1820's, which today is known as Beverly Hills. Their adobe was still standing across the road from the Beverly Hills Hotel as late as 1920.
Francisco & Isidro Reyes were grandsons of Juan Francisco Reyes, first Los Angeles mayor of African descent 1793-1795, who was also the first grantee of the San Fernando Valley.
Isidro Reyes lived in Santa Monica canyon where his father worked a large tract of land extending to what is now Hollywood. He was sent by his father to the Brea pits to sell tar to the Los Angeles people who used it for their roofs.

But California's era of relative racial harmony died in 1848 with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. A defeated Mexico turned California over to the United States, and within a few years, the California Legislature ruled that anyone who was of one-eighth African descent was black and, therefore, denied the right to vote, testify in court, homestead or attend integrated schools.
Undaunted, many slaves worked double time in California's gold fields to buy freedom for themselves and their families, and black and white abolitionists battled discrimination in San Francisco and Sacramento. Though their numbers were small -- only 1,000 African Americans were listed in California in 1852 -- they published lively weekly newspapers in Northern California and established schools and churches.

In 1858, Judge Edwin Bryant Crocker, an abolitionist who helped found the California Republican Party, successfully argued in Superior Court that Archie Lee, a slave from Mississippi, was entitled to his freedom because his owner had lived in California for a year, was thus a citizen -- and citizens of California were not allowed to own slaves.

The state Supreme Court overturned the decision, finding Lee's owner had been ignorant of the law; eventually, Lee, like hundreds of other California African Americans, moved to British Columbia, Canada, where blacks were allowed to vote, own land and attend public schools.
The seeds of the modern civil rights movement were planted in mid-19th century California, said Quintard Taylor, a professor at the University of Washington. --Stephen Magagnini ]

In contemporary Mexican society the sistema no longer functions overtly but Afro-Mexicans remain largely marginalized and occupy places at the lowest rung of the economic ladders. Bobby Vaughn, a scholar of Afro Mexican Studies, asserts that issues of race in Mexico have “been so colored by Mexico’s preoccupation with the Indian question that the Afro Mexican experience tends to blend almost invisibly into the background, even to Afro Mexicans themselves.”

The national focus on Mexican identity as a dichotomy of Spanish and Aztec-Mexica-Maya or indigenismo-mestizaje effectively excludes them. Anani Dzidzienyo (No Longer Invisible) characterizes it as follows, “mestizaje ignores Blacks to such an extent that it would make all Blacks mestizos of some sort.”

Since the mid 1990s, Afro Mexicans from thirty African-descent areas are convening in what is called an “Encuentro de Pueblos Negros” or a gathering of Black towns. Led by Father Glyn Jermott they are organizing, in his words, "… to relate our common history as black people, to strengthen our union as communities, to organize and open realizable paths to secure our future, and to resist our marginalization in the life of the Mexican nation." Their movement parallels similar ones involving African-descended peoples in Guatemala, Belize and the Honduras.

Juan Garrido

Did you know that…. Juan Garrído traveled with conquistador Hernán Cortés
to México in 1510 and was the first person to sow wheat
and manufacture flour in the Western Hemisphere.
He was a native of West Africa who, as a free man, went
to Lisbon, Portugal to be Christianized and educated. It
is speculated that Garrído may have been a member of a
royal family—thus his free status. Before reaching
México he was a member of the expeditions of Nícolas
De Ovando, Ponce de Léon and Diego Vélasquez.
He journeyed to Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, Cuba,
Guadeloupe, Dominica and Florida. In later life Gárrido
still searched for fame and fortune in such places as
Míchoacan, México and Baja, California. He died poor
and forgotten but his contribution of a common foodstuff
forever changed our eating habits.