Review: exhibition: africans in mexican history

[Raha]

Africans in Mexico: A blunt history

Pilsen museum opens ambitious exhibition, asking tough questions about
racial identity south of the border

By Oscar Avila
Tribune staff reporter
Published February 8, 2006

Unknown even to many Mexicans, Africans helped build their
country--toiling in silver mines, fighting alongside Zapata's
guerrillas during the 1910 revolution and shaping cultural traditions
such as Carnaval, which sprang from African roots.
Africans in Mexico also have suffered some of the same brutality and
bias as their kinsmen north of the border.

Now, as Mexicans migrate to Chicago, some find themselves competing
with African-Americans for aldermanic seats, factory jobs, even gang
turf.

That shared heritage and intertwined future are at the heart of a new
exhibition at the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum, "The African
Presence in Mexico," the most ambitious and potentially controversial
project ever for the Pilsen institution.

The exhibition asks tough questions about racial identity and
politics, starting with the paintings, photographs, sculptures and
videos, some of them jarring.

The centerpiece of one hall is a huge tableau showing two
lynchings--one an African-American being lynched by white southerners,
the other an African in Mexico being hung by a Spaniard. Between them
is a panel of racial caricatures of Spaniards, Africans and indigenous
Mexicans.

Organizers plan to convene panels of scholars to discuss antidotes to
the modern-day divide. Later projects include an exchange between
Mexican and African-American church members in Chicago.

Museum officials know the project won't please everybody.

"People say that my problem is that I make people uncomfortable,"
museum director Carlos Tortolero said. "But how can you talk about
racism and race relations and make it sound comfortable? Do you have
Kermit the Frog come out and sing a song? We need to be frank if we
want to teach."

The exhibition, in the works for years, has thrust Mexico's now tiny
African population into an unexpected spotlight.

As in the United States and the Caribbean, African slaves were brought
to Mexico during the conquest of the New World. In 1609, a man named
Yanga founded what is considered the hemisphere's first settlement of
freed slaves in the state of Veracruz.

As in other Latin American nations, skin color determined one's place
in society. The exhibition features colonial-era paintings called
castas, meaning caste, which featured Africans in subservient roles.

The push for Mexican independence also meant a push for national unity
at the expense of racial identity, said Cesareo Moreno, the museum's
visual arts director. And because Mexico had no formal segregation,
Mexicans with African roots easily blended into society, he said.

Moreno's uncle told him that Africans lived only in their current
enclaves, mainly near Veracruz on the Caribbean coast and near Oaxaca
on the Pacific.

"I said, `No, Tio. They are from our town too,'" Moreno said, noting
that many Africans worked in the silver mines near Guanajuato.

The history is so hidden that Sergio Penaloza, a black biology
professor from Cuajinicuilapa who was invited to help introduce the
project this weekend, said his first tour of the exhibition revealed a
culture rarely visible in his native Mexico.

On one wall was a musical instrument made from a donkey jaw, common in
African culture. Another room featured black-and-white photographs of
Africans in the sugar fields. And there were less pleasant images,
including a movie poster of an actor in blackface for a film called
"Angelitos Negros," or "Little Black Angels."

Penaloza came for the opening week's events because he believes that
Chicagoans need to hear directly from Afro-Mexicans themselves.

"This gives us a presence here in the United States, not just with our
labor but with our way of thinking," said Penaloza, an activist with a
group called Mexico Negro.

A handful of contemporary dust-ups and the changing ethnic
demographics of the United States add urgency to the message.

Last year, Mexican President Vicente Fox said that Mexican immigrants
were doing work in the United States that "not even blacks want to
do." African-American leaders in the U.S., such as Rev. Jesse Jackson,
demanded an apology.

A few months later, African-American leaders condemned a Mexican
postage stamp that featured Memin, a caricature of a black boy with
exaggerated lips.

But Tortolero said museum officials are especially worried that
African-Americans and the surging Mexican population in Chicago are
being "pitted against each other." Museum officials invited prominent
black leaders in academia, business and culture to participate on a
committee to shape the exhibition.

Ricardo Millett, president of the Woods Fund of Chicago and a
committee member, said Chicago risks an outbreak of racial tension as
African-Americans battle with Mexican day laborers for jobs on street
corners and rival gangs fight for school turf across ethnic lines.

"We wanted more than an exhibition that said, `Come, see the pretty
pictures,'" said Millett, a Panamanian native of African descent.
"Hopefully, this will relieve some of the ugly tensions that are
manifesting themselves and let us fill the gap of ignorance."

At Little Village High School, where Mexican and African-American
students have clashed, museum officials will stage a community play
about race relations. An African-American artist who lives in heavily
Mexican Pilsen has created a mural for the exhibition that uses a DNA
strand and Chicago figures such as Barack Obama to illustrate common
struggles.

Museum officials want to show that those ties run deep; some slaves
followed the Underground Railroad to seek refuge in Mexico. Many
American Negro Leagues baseball players competed in the Mexican
Leagues during the off-season, and poet Langston Hughes did much of
his work during extended stays in Mexico.

To probe these topics in detail, the exhibition will run for seven
months, twice as long as a typical museum exhibition. It will take up
three of the museum's five main halls, an unprecedented display.

After the show closes in September, museum officials plan to take the
exhibition to Albuquerque and eventually Mexico.

"As Mexicans, this is almost like finding out you have a long-lost
brother," Tortolero said. "Our family just got a little bigger. It's
an opportunity to embrace that."

- - -

If you go

WHAT: "African Presence in Mexico" exhibition

WHERE: Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum, 1852 W. 19th St. in Pilsen, Chicago

WHEN: Feb. 11 through Sept. 3

HOURS: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday.

COST: Exhibitions are free. Donations accepted.

FOR MORE INFORMATION: Call 312-738-1503 or visit the museum's Web
site, www.mfacmchicago.org

#############################################
this is e-drum, a listserv providing information of interests
to black writers and diverse supporters worldwide.
e-drum is moderated by kalamu ya salaam (kalamu@aol.com).
----------------------------------
to subscribe to e-drum send a blank email to:
e-drum-subscribe@topica.com
---------------------------------------------
to get off the e-drum listserv send a blank email to:
e-drum-unsubscribe@topica.com
----------------------------------------------
to read past messages or search the archives, go to:
http://www.topica.com/lists/e-drum