Narratives of Belonging and Exclusion: Nationalism, Blackness and Citizenship in Afro-México

• In Event: The Politics and Racial Aesthetics of Public Space

Abstract

This paper will examine how narratives of and the visual economies associated with beaches in the port city of Veracruz and in the Costa Chica region of Oaxaca and Guerrero work to crystalize México’s ideological underpinnings concerning race and Blackness. I also analyze the intersecting, but differing national and regional conceptualizations of gender, sex and sexualities operating in these sites. I will demonstrate how particular narratives of belonging and citizenship intersect with conceptualizations of Blackness, mestizaje, Indigeneity and whiteness in the contemporary. These beach cities - particularly that of Veracruz - are marketed in ways that resemble other problematic campaigns in the Caribbean that use prominent black imagery and stereotypes. This works to (re)produce an exotic space that is México’s own version of what Christen Smith may characterize as an Afro-Paradise. These images operate both in tandem with and in contradiction to México’s unique version of mestizaje.
In part, this paper will further my inquiry concerning how racial projects on México’s Caribbean and Pacific coasts take on local meaning in connection to both the regional and the global. This is part of my larger project, which examines how Blackness, Indigeneity, and citizenship are conceptualized in 21st-century México—in public discourse and state projects—as well as the ways in which these conceptualizations affect the material realities of Afro-Mexicanos.

Author

• Ashley N Agbasoga, Northwestern University