Afro-Mexican Lives in the Long Nineteenth Century

Slavery, Freedom, and the Writing of History

Theodore W. Cohen, Nicole von Germeten

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN: 9781009455978
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Latin American & Caribbean History
• Index: History

As the first book-length examination of abolition and its legacies in Mexico, this collection reveals innovative social, cultural, political, and intellectual approaches to Afro-Mexican history. It complicates the long-standing belief that Afro-Mexicans were erased from the nation. The volume instead shows how they created their own archival legibility by continuing and modifying colonial-era forms of resistance, among other survival strategies. The chapters document the lives and choices of Afro-descended peoples, both enslaved and free, over the course of two centuries, culminating during the Mexican Revolution of 1910. Contributors examine how Afro-Mexicans who lived under Spanish rule took advantage of colonial structures to self-advocate and form communities. Beginning with the war for independence and continuing after the abolition of slavery and caste in the 1820s, Afro-descended citizens responded to and, at times, resisted the claims of racial disappearance to shape both local and national politics.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title page
• Series page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Chronology of Key Events in Afro-Mexican History
• Introduction
• Part I Freedom and Colonial Legacies
• Part II (Un)Disappearing Black Mexico
• Index